----------------- 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 ------------ FOOTER TO HES POSTING ------------ For information, send the message "info HES" to [log in to unmask]