Wojtek Sokolowski wrote: > > > Therefore, the mystification of mathematics in modern economics can be > compared to cargo cults that spread on some Pacific isalands after World War > II. The Americans established air bases on those islands, and to buy the > aborigines' loyalty, they showered them with goodies which, of course, they > transpored by air. After the war, the Gringos left, and the trickle of > goodies dried up. To reverse their fortune, the aborigines started to > emulate what the Gringos did -- building aircraft carrying the goodies to > the islands. Except that lacking the proper materials, the aborigines built > those aircraft from sticks and straw. > I like very much the metaphor above. Actually, it suits the economists. All attempts to construct an original axiomatic basis in economics remain still uncompleted, and mainly the marxist one. The 28th january 1884, Engels wrote to Lavrov: "The Third book, capitalist production taken as a whole, exists in two draftings which have been written before 1869 ; later, there are only a few notes and a notebook full of equations to calculate the numerous ways of surplus-value rate changing into profit rate." So, 14 years before Marx's death, "The Capital" was already, and for ever, an uncompleted work. If his pages of equations had enabled their author to transform the "Mehrwertsrate" in a "Profitrate", the mathematical notebook would have been followed by new writings concluding or rectifying the "Third book", and by a publishing. Not only Marx didn't go on writing, but he died without having told anyone about the state of his work. The 2nd april 1883 (Marx was dead the 14th march), Engels wrote to the same Lavrov: "Tomorrow, I'll have at last some hours to spend on revewing all the manuscripts the Mohr has left us (...) But he always hided from us the state of his works ; he knew that once aware of what was ready to be published, we'd have violeted him until he consents." And this silence lasted 14 years! Due to dogmas and neuroses accompanying the value accumulation process, to the merchants struggle for contending with the political institutions for power, and to the awfully effective scholastic and working consensus by which the ad hoc ideology can reproduce, neoclassical economists are unable to overcome the lesser epistemologic obstacle. But because of a paralyzing devoutness, Marxists never tried, too, to go beyond the conceptual contradiction against which Marx came up. Except Rosa Luxemburg (by the way, a woman who readily confessed she was hopeless at mathematics... ) But all that doesn't mean that an economic science, using mathematics, can't be. It only means that an original economic tool, taking place beside the other social sciences (and no more above them), is still ahead ... Sincerly, Romain Kroes (Warning : Engels letters translation here is of mine, and from a french version, the only one I had handy)
