When I entered grad school (1969), a group of us wrote a parody about people coming from the land of MIT to bring us enlightenment...only they could not speak in the common tongue...

I'll bet one could find complaints about Marshall bringing too much mathematics into economics.  Or maybe Jevons, or Walras.

Don Coffin

________________________________________
From: Societies for the History of Economics [[log in to unmask]] on behalf of Robert Leeson [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Tuesday, July 29, 2014 10:46 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [SHOE] ghostly fingers

"I am appalled ... by the extent to which there has been a tendency for economics to become a purely abstract branch of mathematics, no longer to be a political economy concerned with the facts of the real world but an intellectual exercise" (Milton Friedman 1985).



----- Original Message -----
From: "Lawrence Boland" <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Tuesday, July 29, 2014 1:07:55 PM
Subject: Re: [SHOE] ghostly fingers

Bob, I would go further:

Some argue that the culture of mathematics departments has
overtaken graduate economics to the extent that realism is
of lesser concern than elegance. I saw this culture first
hand and when I took graduate mathematics classes as part of
my graduate education.

LB

On 29-Jul-14 12:48 PM, Robert Cord wrote:
> Dear Martin
>
> Your daughter's professor was and is surely correct. Indeed, it is
> probably not an exaggeration to argue that a mathematics undergraduate has
> an easier time of it at economics graduate level than their economics
> counterpart. This is why we need more history of thought - and I don't
> mean history of mathematics!
>
> As ever
>
> Bob
>
>
>
> On Tue, July 29, 2014 20:13, Martin Tangora wrote:
>> Disclosure:  I am a (retired) mathematician, and in particular a
>> (retired) teacher of calculus.
>>
>>
>> In my line of work we have all heard of Berkeley's "ghosts of departed
>> quantities," but most of us would probably not know that this witty
>> criticism was published in 1734.  There is a very satisfactory article in
>> Wikipedia on the Berkeley book, The Analyst, that gives plenty of
>> context for the jibe:
>>
>>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Analyst
>>>
>>
>> I don't think that "ghostly fingers" has any connection to this.  As I
>> think some of you already have done, I checked the Google Ngram Viewer for
>> "ghostly fingers" and it does not appear until the 1830s.  There is
>> nothing about "fingers" in the Berkeley discussion.
>>
>> An economics professor told my daughter, whose B.A. was in economics,
>> that grad school in economics was essentially mathematics.  Whether or not
>> that is true, I would have thought that all of you would know the correct
>> definition of the slope of a curve, which involves forming a quotient, and
>> then finding the limit as both members of that fraction tend to zero.  One
>> must strictly avoid actually setting the members to zero, but the limit
>> makes sense anyway.  And Berkeley is witty about it, and can be said to be
>> correct (see the Wiki referenced above), but Berkeley is long gone, and
>> the calculus is still very much with us.
>>
>> On 7/28/2014 10:30 AM, Alain Alcouffe wrote:
>>
>>> Thanks for the tips
>>> I believed that it was a reference to Berkeley and his "ghosts of
>>> departed quantities" but by this sentence, Berkeley targeted the
>>> infinitesimals (or the calculus) not the law of motion. Besides, I could
>>> not find the expression or an approaching one in Berkeley.. Then I
>>> searched in the 4 letters of Isaac Newton to Bentley - in the third one,
>>> Newton came very close to the idea.. describing a “divine
>>> arm” placing planets ... Anyway I continue to suspect that despite google
>>> search the expression could be found during the 18th century - (possibly
>>> as a joke about the Holy Ghost)
>>> During the 20th century, the expression in relation to Newton appears
>>> in A. Koestler, The Sleepwalkers. A History of Man’s Changing Vision of
>>> the Universe, London, Penguin Books, 1959, p. 511. (and also
>>> ghost-fingers)
>>>
>>> On 28/07/2014 14:35, Scot Stradley wrote:
>>>
>>>> I don't have the quotes at fingertip, but the phrase probably refers
>>>> to Berkeley's critique of the metaphysics of calculus. Newton's method
>>>> of determining the limit involved the use of triangles whose side
>>>> adjacent to the curve was gradually reduced so that the known
>>>> properties of geometry could explain the slope of the curve.  Newton
>>>> lays this out in Book I of the Principia.  Obviously the size of the
>>>> side facing the curve and the area of the triangle were gradually
>>>> reduced-- hence the reference to vanishing quantities.
>>>>
>>>> Scot A. Stradley, Ph.D.
>>>> Professor of Finance
>>>> Offutt School of Business
>>>> Concordia College
>>>> Moorhead, MN 56562
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> ________________________________________
>>>> From: Societies for the History of Economics [[log in to unmask]] on
>>>> behalf of Nicholas Theocarakis [[log in to unmask]] Sent: Sunday, July
>>>> 27, 2014 6:44 PM
>>>> To: [log in to unmask]
>>>> Subject: Re: [SHOE] ghostly fingers
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Dear Alain
>>>> I did a check on Google Books setting time parameters. The phrase
>>>> "ghostly fingers" does not appear before the 19th century.
>>>> This might help.
>>>> Nikos
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Sat, Jul 26, 2014 at 9:58 AM, Alain Alcouffe
>>>> <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>>
>>>> wrote:
>>>> Dear Colleagues,
>>>> In the Methodology of economics, Mark Blaug wrote :
>>>> he was unable to meet the objection of many of his contemporaries that
>>>> the very notion of gravity acting instantaneously at a distance
>>>> without any material medium to carry the force - ghostly fingers
>>>> clutching through the void! - is utterly metaphysical. (cf. snd
>>>> edition, p. 6). Actually Blaug has added several references in
>>>> footnote 2: Toulmin, S., and J. Goodfield. 1963. The Fabric of the
>>>> Heavens.
>>>> London: Penguin Books., pp. 281-2;
>>>> Toulmin and Goodfield, 11965. The Architecture of Matter. London:
>>>> Penguin Books, pp. 217-20;
>>>> Hanson, N. R. 1965. Patterns of Discovery. Cambridge: Cambridge
>>>> University Press. pp. 90-1;
>>>> Losee, J. 1972. A Historical Introduction to the Philosophy of
>>>> Science. London: Oxford University
>>>> Press., pp. 90-3
>>>> But I could not check any (except Losee). When I read this sentence
>>>> three decades ago, I took  "ghostly fingers" for an allusion to
>>>> Berkeley's Analyst (Criticising "fluxions", Berkeley wrote: May we
>>>> not call them the ghosts of departed quantities?). But working on
>>>> Smith's History of Astronomy, I am afraid I was wrong and Mark Blaug
>>>> did not quote Berkeley at all and could have another author or passage
>>>> in mind. Has anybody a suggestion? (I cannot check Blaug's references
>>>> myself except Losee) best regards
>>
>>
>> --
>> Martin C. Tangora
>> tangora (at) uic.edu
>>
>


--
Lawrence A. Boland, FRSC
Department of Economics, Simon Fraser University
Burnaby BC Canada V5A-1S6
phone: 778-782-4487, web: http://www.sfu.ca/~boland