The Inaugural Conference @ King's, Institute for New Economic Thinking, Session 6: Mathematical Models: Rigorously Testable, Qualitative Metaphors, or Simply an Entry Barrier.
The Inaugural Conference @ King's, Institute for New Economic Thinking, Session 6: Mathematical Models: Rigorously Testable, Qualitative Metaphors, or Simply an Entry Barrier.
Comments
As usual, Professor Lawson rings all the right bells, but for me he doesn't satisfactorily delimit what he means by 'closure' and 'mathematics'. On p.7-8 of his paper he directs our attention to the "guaranteeing" of closure, and in so doing misses the nature of a closed path, which we have only a tendency to follow and which is formed neither by intrinsic or extrinsic conditions, but by ourselves usually submitting to the physical law of Least Action.
Tony rightly argues against abstruse algebra, but the graphical representation of directed geometrical relationships and simple non-metric topological diagrams (c.f. maps of London Underground, electric circuits and of relationships in systems analysis) are much more fundamentally 'mathematical', i.e. techniques of learning (and comparing), as against a way of expressing merely quantitative aspects of what has been observed.
When their algebraic models abstract away direction, it is hardly surprising that physicists and economists relying on them fail to realise when they are going in the wrong direction. Being itself has evolved from the perpetual motion of polarised energy forced by the turbulence of the Big Bang into chasing its own tail, not from physicists trying to break that self-closure. Economics has evolved from our biological need "to keep body and soul together".
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