scholarly journals PROSPETTIVE E LIMITI DELL'ECONOMIA QUANTITATIVA

2013 ◽  
pp. 43-55
Author(s):  
Luigi Pasinetti
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Quantitative Methods ◽  
Applied Mathematics ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
Economic Research ◽  
Value Judgements ◽  
And Mathematics ◽  
The One ◽  
Object Of Study ◽  
High Degree

Riassunto. –L’economia politica è, tra le scienze umane, quella che maggiormente sperimenta l’attrazione verso i metodi quantitativi e in particolare verso la matematica e la statistica. Recentemente questa attrazione si è fatta ancor più forte che in passato, al punto che non è raro trovare, tra gli economisti, dei teorici che amerebbero vedere l’economia considerata come un ramo della matematica applicata. Ma sarebbe davvero utile convogliare l’economia tra le scienze naturali o addirittura spingerla al ruolo di un ramo della matematica applicata? Una attenta riflessione porta ben presto alla constatazione che il rapporto tra economia e matematica è molto più complesso di quanto possa sembrare a prima vista. L’autore sottolinea che ci sono almeno quattro caratteristiche che differenziano l’economia politica dalle scienze naturali: l’oggetto di studio; la finalità della ricerca economica tesa ad influenzare l’oggetto di studio; la sua caratteristica di disciplina per certi aspetti positiva e per altri aspetti normativa; il coinvolgimento dei giudizi di valore. Per illustrare queste differenze e inquadrare la dimensione autonoma dell’economia politica, l’autore ricorre ad una rassegna critica delle opinioni di alcuni economisti di rilievo, che hanno dedicato contributi all’argomento qui in discussione. Specifici riferimenti vengono fatti a Marshall, Keynes, Hicks, Morishima e – tra gli economisti maggiormente presenti nelle nostre discussioni – a Sraffa e Sen, ai quali ultimi l’autore si sente più vicino.***Abstract. – Among the human sciences, economics is the one experimenting a high degree of attraction towards quantitative methods and, in particular, towards mathematics and statistics. In our times, this attraction is even stronger than in the past, so that it is customary to find, among economists, theoreticians aiming at presenting economics as a branch of applied mathematics. Is it really useful to include economics among the natural sciences, or even to consider it as a branch of applied mathematics? A careful reflection leads quickly to the awareness that the relations between economics and mathematics are much more complex than one can see at first sight. The Author underlines that there are at least four characteristics which differentiate political economy from natural sciences: the object of study; the purpose of economic research (which has an influence on the object of study); its characteristic of being a discipline which is both positive and normative; the dependence on value judgements. To illustrate such differences, and to focus on the autonomous dimension of political economy, the Author critically reviews the opinions of some famous economists, who contributed to the subject under discussion. Specific references are made to Marshall, Keynes, Hicks, Morishima and – among the economists more relevant to the present discussion – Sraffa and Sen, to whom the Author feels closer than to the others.

scholarly journals Testing Economic Theory

2018 ◽  
pp. 303-313
Author(s):  
Christopher P. Guzelian
Keyword(s):  
A Priori ◽  
Number System ◽  
Physical Reality ◽  
Economic Research ◽  
Economic Knowledge ◽  
Fractional Reserve Banking ◽  
Physical Universe ◽  
And Mathematics ◽  
Reserve Banking ◽  
The One

Two years ago, Bob Mulligan and I empirically tested whether the Bank of Amsterdam, a prototypical central bank, had caused a boom-bust cycle in the Amsterdam commodities markets in the 1780s owing to the bank’s sudden initiation of low-fractional-re-serve banking (Guzelian & Mulligan 2015).1 Widespread criticism came quickly after we presented our data findings at that year’s Austrian Economic Research Conference. Walter Block representa-tively responded: «as an Austrian, I maintain you cannot «test» apodictic theories, you can only illustrate them».2 Non-Austrian, so-called «empirical» economists typically have no problem with data-driven, inductive research. But Austrians have always objected strenuously on ontological and epistemolog-ical grounds that such studies do not produce real knowledge (Mises 1998, 113-115; Mises 2007). Camps of economists are talking past each other in respective uses of the words «testing» and «eco-nomic theory». There is a vital distinction between «testing» (1) an economic proposition, praxeologically derived, and (2) the rele-vance of an economic proposition, praxeologically derived. The former is nonsensical; the latter may be necessary to acquire eco-nomic theory and knowledge. Clearing up this confusion is this note’s goal. Rothbard (1951) represents praxeology as the indispensible method for gaining economic knowledge. Starting with a Aristote-lian/Misesian axiom «humans act» or a Hayekian axiom of «humans think», a voluminous collection of logico-deductive eco-nomic propositions («theorems») follows, including theorems as sophisticated and perhaps unintuitive as the one Mulligan and I examined: low-fractional-reserve banking causes economic cycles. There is an ontological and epistemological analog between Austrian praxeology and mathematics. Much like praxeology, we «know» mathematics to be «true» because it is axiomatic and deductive. By starting with Peano Axioms, mathematicians are able by a long process of creative deduction, to establish the real number system, or that for the equation an + bn = cn, there are no integers a, b, c that satisfy the equation for any integer value of n greater than 2 (Fermat’s Last Theorem). But what do mathematicians mean when they then say they have mathematical knowledge, or that they have proven some-thing «true»? Is there an infinite set of rational numbers floating somewhere in the physical universe? Naturally no. Mathemati-cians mean that they have discovered an apodictic truth — some-thing unchangeably true without reference to physical reality because that truth is a priori.

Hobbes, Thomas (1588–1679)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tom Sorell
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
Sovereign Power ◽  
And Mathematics ◽  
Business Agent ◽  
The Many ◽  
The One ◽  
First Philosophy ◽  
Ethics And Politics

Among the figures who were conscious of developing a new science in the seventeenth century, the Englishman Hobbes stands out as an innovator in ethics, politics and psychology. He was active in a number of other fields, notably geometry, ballistics and optics, and seems to have shown considerable acumen as a theorist of light. His contemporaries, especially in Continental Europe, regarded him as a major intellectual figure. Yet he did not earn a living as a scientist or a writer on politics. In 1608 he entered the service of Henry Cavendish, First Earl of Devonshire, and maintained his connections with the family for more than seventy years, working as tutor, translator, travelling companion, business agent and political counsellor. The royalist sympathies of his employers and their circle determined Hobbes’ allegiances in the period preceding and during the English Civil War. Hobbes’ first political treatise, The Elements of Law (1640), was not intended for publication but was meant as a sort of long briefing paper that royalists in parliament could use to justify actions by the king. Even Leviathan (1651), which is often read as if it is concerned with the perennial questions of political philosophy, betrays its origins in the disputes of the pre-Civil War period in England. For much of his life the aristocrats who employed Hobbes brought him into contact with the intellectual life of Continental Europe. He found not just the ideas but also the spokesmen congenial. Perhaps as early as 1630 he met Marin Mersenne, then at the centre of a Parisian network of scientists, mathematicians and theologians that included Descartes as a corresponding member. It was to this group that Hobbes attached himself in 1640 when political events in England seemed to him to threaten his safety, causing him to flee to France. He stayed for ten years and succeeded in making a name for himself, particularly as a figure who managed to bring geometrical demonstration into the field of ethics and politics. His De cive, a treatise that has much in common with the Elements of Law, had a very favourable reception in Paris in 1642. By the time De cive appeared, Hobbes had taught himself enough natural philosophy and mathematics to be taken seriously as a savant in his own right. He had also conceived the plan of producing a large-scale exposition of the ‘elements’ of philosophy as a whole – from first philosophy, geometry and mechanics through to ethics and politics. De cive would be the third volume of a trilogy entitled The Elements of Philosophy. These books present Hobbes’ considered views in metaphysics, physics and psychology against the background of a preferred scheme of science. Metaphysics, or first philosophy, is primarily a definitional enterprise for Hobbes. It selects the terms whose significations need to be grasped if the principles of the rest of the sciences are to be taught or demonstrated. Foremost among the terms that Hobbes regards as central are ‘body’ and ‘motion’. According to Hobbes, the whole array of natural sciences can be organized according to how each treats of motion. Geometry is the first of these sciences in the ‘order of demonstration’ – that is, the science whose truths are the most general and on which the truths of all the other natural sciences somehow depend. Mechanics is next in the preferred order of the sciences. It considers ‘what effects one body moved worketh upon another’. Physics is the science of sense and the effects of the parts of bodies on sense. Moral philosophy or ‘the science of the motions of the mind’ comes next, and is informed by physics. It studies such passions as anger, hope and fear, and in doing so informs civil philosophy. Starting from the human emotional make up, civil philosophy works out what agreements between individuals will form commonwealths, and what behaviour is required within commonwealths to make them last. The behaviour required of the public in order to maintain a commonwealth is absolute submission to a sovereign power. In practice this means abiding by whatever a sovereign declares as law, even if those laws appear to be exacting. Law-abiding behaviour is required so long as, in return, subjects can reasonably expect effective action from the sovereign to secure their safety and wellbeing. With minor variations, this is the theme of all three of Hobbes’ political treatises – the Elements of Law, De cive and Leviathan. Government is created through a transfer of right by the many to the one or the few, in whom an unlimited power is vested. The laws of the sovereign power may seem intrusive and restrictive, but what is the alternative to compliance? Hobbes’ answer is famous: a life that is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short. This conception of life without government is not based on the assumption that human beings are selfish and aggressive but, rather, on the idea that if each is their own judge of what is best, there is no assurance that one’s safety and one’s possessions will not be at the mercy of other people – a selfish few, a vainglorious minority or even members of a moderate majority who think they have to take pre-emptive action against a vainglorious or selfish few. It is the general condition of uncertainty, in conditions where people can do anything they like to pursue their wellbeing and secure their safety, that Hobbes calls ‘war’.

Hobbes, Thomas (1588–1679)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tom Sorell
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
Sovereign Power ◽  
And Mathematics ◽  
Business Agent ◽  
The Many ◽  
The One ◽  
First Philosophy ◽  
Ethics And Politics

Among the figures who were conscious of developing a new science in the seventeenth century, the Englishman Hobbes stands out as an innovator in ethics, politics and psychology. He was active in a number of other fields, notably geometry, ballistics and optics, and seems to have shown considerable acumen as a theorist of light. His contemporaries, especially in Continental Europe, regarded him as a major intellectual figure. Yet he did not earn a living as a scientist or a writer on politics. In 1608 he entered the service of Henry Cavendish, First Earl of Devonshire, and maintained his connections with the family for more than seventy years, working as tutor, translator, travelling companion, business agent and political counsellor. The royalist sympathies of his employers and their circle determined Hobbes’ allegiances in the period preceding and during the English Civil War. Hobbes’ first political treatise, The Elements of Law (1640), was not intended for publication but was meant as a sort of long briefing paper that royalists in parliament could use to justify actions by the king. Even Leviathan (1651), which is often read as if it is concerned with the perennial questions of political philosophy, betrays its origins in the disputes of the pre-Civil War period in England. For much of his life the aristocrats who employed Hobbes brought him into contact with the intellectual life of Continental Europe. He found not just the ideas but also the spokesmen congenial. Perhaps as early as 1630 he met Marin Mersenne, then at the centre of a Parisian network of scientists, mathematicians and theologians that included Descartes as a corresponding member. It was to this group that Hobbes attached himself in 1640 when political events in England seemed to him to threaten his safety, causing him to flee to France. He stayed for ten years and succeeded in making a name for himself, particularly as a figure who managed to bring geometrical demonstration into the field of ethics and politics. His De cive, a treatise that has much in common with the Elements of Law, had a very favourable reception in Paris in 1642. By the time De cive appeared, Hobbes had taught himself enough natural philosophy and mathematics to be taken seriously as a savant in his own right. He had also conceived the plan of producing a large-scale exposition of the ‘elements’ of philosophy as a whole – from first philosophy, geometry and mechanics through to ethics and politics. De cive would be the third volume of a trilogy entitled The Elements of Philosophy. These books present Hobbes’ considered views in metaphysics, physics and psychology against the background of a preferred scheme of science. Metaphysics, or first philosophy, is primarily a definitional enterprise for Hobbes. It selects the terms whose significations need to be grasped if the principles of the rest of the sciences are to be taught or demonstrated. Foremost among the terms that Hobbes regards as central are ‘body’ and ‘motion’. According to Hobbes, the whole array of natural sciences can be organized according to how each treats of motion. Geometry is the first of these sciences in the ‘order of demonstration’ – that is, the science whose truths are the most general and on which the truths of all the other natural sciences somehow depend. Mechanics is next in the preferred order of the sciences. It considers ‘what effects one body moved worketh upon another’. Physics is the science of sense and the effects of the parts of bodies on sense. Moral philosophy or ‘the science of the motions of the mind’ comes next, and is informed by physics. It studies such passions as anger, hope and fear, and in doing so informs civil philosophy. Starting from the human emotional make up, civil philosophy works out what agreements between individuals will form commonwealths, and what behaviour is required within commonwealths to make them last. The behaviour required of the public in order to maintain a commonwealth is absolute submission to a sovereign power. In practice this means abiding by whatever a sovereign declares as law, even if those laws appear to be exacting. Law-abiding behaviour is required so long as, in return, subjects can reasonably expect effective action from the sovereign to secure their safety and wellbeing. With minor variations, this is the theme of all three of Hobbes’ political treatises – the Elements of Law, De cive and Leviathan. Government is created through a transfer of right by the many to the one or the few, in whom an unlimited power is vested. The laws of the sovereign power may seem intrusive and restrictive, but what is the alternative to compliance? Hobbes’ answer is famous: a life that is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short. This conception of life without government is not based on the assumption that human beings are selfish and aggressive but, rather, on the idea that if each is their own judge of what is best, there is no assurance that one’s safety and one’s possessions will not be at the mercy of other people – a selfish few, a vainglorious minority or even members of a moderate majority who think they have to take pre-emptive action against a vainglorious or selfish few. It is the general condition of uncertainty, in conditions where people can do anything they like to pursue their wellbeing and secure their safety, that Hobbes calls ‘war’.

scholarly journals Reflection on the Borders of Language and Speech in Light of Discoveries in Zoosemiotics

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-53
Author(s):  
Tomasz Nowak
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
The Other ◽  
Special Focus ◽  
Communicative Skills ◽  
And Mathematics ◽  
The One

The main problem that Tomasz Nowak discusses in this article concerns the boundaries of language and speech as set by both social sciences and the humanities and mathematics and natural sciences. His special focus is the fusion of semiotics and biology known as biosemiotics. Nowak argues that bio-communicative skills of human and non-human animals are divided by a gap which is both quantitative and qualitative. However, phylogenetic pre-adaptations and (pre)ontogenetic dispositions of human and non-human animals are, on the one hand, communicatively discreet, and, on the other, cognitively and behaviorally continual. The results of empirical studies cited and examined by Nowak support the idea that there are bio-communicative traits specific to humans.

El Prestige: comparativa de los regímenes internacionales de responsabilidad civil

2019 ◽  
Vol 37 (3) ◽  
pp. 31
Author(s):  
Raquel Fernández González ◽  
Marcos Íñigo Pérez Pérez
Keyword(s):  
Institutional Economics ◽  
Geographical Area ◽  
New Institutional Economics ◽  
Rigorous Analysis ◽  
Judicial Process ◽  
Main Research ◽  
Civil Responsibility ◽  
The One ◽  
High Degree ◽  
The Prestige

The return of institutions to the main research agenda has highlighted the importance of rules in economic analysis. The New Institutional Economics has allowed a better understanding of the case studies that concern different areas of knowledge, also the one concerning the management of natural resources. In this article, the institutional analysis focuses on the maritime domain, where two large civil liability regimes for pollution coexist (OPA 90-IMO), each in a different geographical area (United States - Europe). Therefore, a comparative analysis is made between the two large regimes of civil responsibility assignment applying them to the Prestige catastrophe. In this way, the allocation and distribution of responsibilities in the investigation and subsequent judicial process of the Prestige is compared with an alternative scenario in which the applicable compensation instruments are governed by the provisions of the Oil Polution Act of 1990 (OPA 90), in order to establish a rigorous analysis on the effects that the different norms can have in the same scenario. In the comparative established in the case of the Prestige, where the responsibilities were solved very slowly in a judicial process with high transaction costs, the application of rules governed by the OPA 90 would not count with such a high degree of imperfection. This is so, since by applying the preponderance of the evidence existing in OPA 90 there would be no mitigation for the presumed culprits. On the other hand, the agents involved in the sinking would not be limited only to the owner, but also that operators or shipowners would be responsible as well. In addition, the amount of compensation would increase when counting in the damage count the personal damages, the taxes without perceiving and the ecological damage caused in a broad sense, damages not computable in the IMO.

Students graduate of the degree course in Natural Sciences and Mathematics and the exercise of teaching profession: findings and implications for basic education

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 51
Author(s):  
A. C. R. Trevisan ◽  
E. P. Trevisan
Keyword(s):  
High School ◽  
Decision Making ◽  
Basic Education ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
Teaching Profession ◽  
Decision Making Process ◽  
Teaching Career ◽  
Professional Performance ◽  
Current Scenario ◽  
And Mathematics

In the article we seek to address questions regarding the interest of graduates of a degree course in Natural Sciences and Mathematics in relation to the teaching career in basic education. The course enables its graduates to work in the subjects Science and Mathematics in the final years of elementary school and Mathematics, Physics and Chemistry in high school. Our intention is to identify and reflect on the perceptions of these graduates about teaching, highlighting with this inherent aspects to the exercise of this profession in basic education. From the application of questionnaires to graduates of this course, we produced data regarding their performance in basic education, which enabled us to reflect on the national scenario in relation to the exercise of this profession. We could observe that the majority of the students participating in the research are not working in basic education and that the current scenario of devaluation of the teaching career exerts a significant influence in the decision making process of choosing or not the teacher profession for professional performance after graduation.

Gift Exchange as Narrative and Metaphor

2019 ◽  
Vol 29 (6) ◽  
pp. 229-252
Keyword(s):  
Economic Theory ◽  
Political Economy ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Gift Exchange ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
Economic Anthropology ◽  
Karl Polanyi ◽  
Commodity Exchange ◽  
Economic Theories ◽  
Characteristic Features

The article deals with characteristic features of economic anthropology"s rhetoric of reciprocity and analyzes the factors that affected its formation. The authors consider two principal interpretations of reciprocity in economic anthropology that were formed under the influence of its two main founders - Malinowski and Mauss. The characteristic features of their two types of rhetoric are discussed together with the purposes for which they were used. Two different intentions were pivotal for the work of these researchers and their followers: first, to establish economic anthropology as a positivistic science; and second, to use the analysis of archaic societies as evidence for their critique of a capitalistic economy.To achieve the first task they actively used rhetoric borrowed from the natural sciences, and especially from biology as well as from economic theories that were another social science also striving for a more rigorous positivism. For the second task they turned to the rhetoric of political economy and used arguments based on a dialectical opposition between commodity exchange and gift exchange. The most prominent example of such dialectical rhetoric is in the works of Chris Gregory and Karl Polanyi in which gift exchange was interpreted as a metaphor for a utopian alternative to capitalistic commodity exchange. Because the rhetoric of economic anthropology from its inception to the present has been profoundly influenced by the language of general economic theory, the article examines the genesis of the rhetoric of economics as a science. This leads to an analysis of how the language of economics was affected by the rhetoric of the natural sciences, then of psychology and finally of law.

Defending the Difference

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
True Nature ◽  
Natural Entities ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
Methodological Difference ◽  
The Difference ◽  
The One

Dreyfus argues that there is a basic methodological difference between the natural sciences and the social sciences, a difference that derives from the different goals and practices of each. He goes on to argue that being a realist about natural entities is compatible with pluralism or, as he calls it, “plural realism.” If intelligibility is always grounded in our practices, Dreyfus points out, then there is no point of view from which one can ask about or provide an answer to the one true nature of ultimate reality. But that is consistent with believing that the natural sciences can still reveal the way the world is independent of our theories and practices.

scholarly journals Confronting the anomaly: directions in (German) economic research after the crisis

2019 ◽  
Vol 32 (4) ◽  
pp. 449-471
Author(s):  
Ulrike Jacob ◽  
Oliver A. Brust
Keyword(s):  
Economic Research ◽  
Economic Crises ◽  
Economic Theories ◽  
Word Analysis ◽  
Alternative Approaches ◽  
The One ◽  
New Strategies

ArgumentRecurring economic crises, like the one of 2007-2008, led to criticism of economic research and a demand to develop new strategies to avoid them. Standard economic theories use conventional approaches to deal with economic challenges, heterodox theories try to develop alternatives with which to face them. It remains unclear whether the 2007-2008 crisis led to a change in economic research as well as to a consideration of alternative approaches. We used co-word analysis to map the structure of economic research in Germany between 2005 and 2014. Core topics within economic research, such as “market” or “production” hardly shift and can be linked to standard economic theories. Peripheral topics such as “inequality” or “unemployment” show greater dynamics. However, only a few of these topics can be linked to heterodox approaches. Certain changes have occurred in reaction to the 2007-2008 crisis. However, the unchanged importance of standard economic topics raises the question whether these changes are sufficient to face coming economic challenges.

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