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Date: | Fri Mar 31 17:18:36 2006 |
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----------------- HES POSTING -----------------
Marshall's oft-quoted (here again by Witold Kwasnicki) letter of advice to
Bowley (about burning the mathematics) is not as straightforward as it
might appear. This is taken up at length in "Chapter 1: Burn the
Mathematics (Tripos)"
in my How Economics Became a Mathematical Science (2002), in which the case
is made that
"[Marshall's]image of mathematics was formed by the early Victorian
Mathematical Tripos of simple geometry, the drawing of cord segments and
conic sections, simple statics, dynamics and the like. His image was
incompatible with either the late 19th century mathematics of
physical-model based analysis, or that which was to supplant it in turn,
the early 20th century move to axiomatics and mathematical-model based
analysis. The former shift would have required a measurement-based
mathematical economics, while the latter would have required a move away
from the study of “mankind in the ordinary business of life.
The paradox of Second Wrangler Marshall growing increasingly suspicious of
mathematics has been seen as a problem for historians of economics from the
perspective of an unchanging mathematics and a changing Marshall, a minor
Das Alfred Marshall Problem: was Marshall’s view of mathematics continuous
over his life, or did he change his mind about the role of mathematics in
economics? If the latter, the historian of economics then needs some
explanation for Marshall's changes. What I am suggesting is an inversion
of the usual picture. I submit that there is considerable explanatory power
in the suggestion that
Marshall's image of mathematics was formed in his own Mathematical Tripos
experience and was generally unchanged through his lifetime. Marshall’s
“advice” to Bowley was given by a 63 year old (nearly retired) scholar: I
am reminded of the peroration in Keynes’s General Theory in which he notes
that 'in the field of economic and political philosophy there are not many
who are influenced by new theories after they are 25 or 30 years of
age.'(Keynes 1936, 383-384) So too for mathematics." (p. 24)
E. Roy Weintraub
Duke University
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