Wednesday, August 28, 2013

Gavin Kennedy — Economics: History or Physics?


Gavin Kennedy enters the economics and maths debate Alfred Marshall's famous quote:
“(1) Use mathematics as shorthand language, rather than as an engine of inquiry. (2) Keep to them till you have done. (3) Translate into English. (4) Then illustrate by examples that are important in real life (5) Burn the mathematics. (6) If you can’t succeed in 4, burn 3. This I do often”.
Kennedy concludes his post:
I recommend David Simpson’s new book: “The Rediscovery of Classical Economics: Adaptation, Complexity and Growth.” Edward Elgar, 2013.
Simpson is an accomplished mathematician who abandoned neoclassical economics after his career in academe and applied economics consultancy. He advocates a more modern maths than that derived from 19th century physics. 
Adam Smith's Lost Legacy
Economics: History or Physics?
Gavin Kennedy

4 comments:

Jan said...

Interesting Tom!It makes think on old Charles Wright Mills appendix in Sociological Imagination:

On Intellectual Craftsmanship
C. WRIGHT MILLS
NEW YORK
Oxford University Press
1959
http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/~psargent/Mills_Intell_Craft.pdf

Tom Hickey said...

Thanks for the link.

Unknown said...

If economics has failed as a science, is it not most likely because economists, almost without exception, have studiously avoided studying banks? Or as Krugman was supposedly told "Don't touch the money system?"

googleheim said...

Economic Ideas and books can be old or new
That is a relief economics is not techie toilet paper requiring throw aways and flush down versions.