We have come a long way since Keynes' day. These kinds of math techniques are exactly directed at laying bare the nature of such interactions. Barkley Rosser -----Original Message----- From: Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com> Date: Saturday, February 17, 2001 6:24 PM Subject: Re: "Volatility as Social Flaring"
>J. Barkley Rosser, Jr. wrote:
>
>>Doug seems to be laying low on this one
>
>Only because I'm about to ship an LBO off to the printer.
>
>In the meanwhile, someone sent me (offlist) this quote from Keynes's
>General Theory. More tomorrow.
>
>Doug
>
>----
>
>> The object of our analysis is, not to provide a machine, or method of
blind
>> manipulation, which will furnish an infallible answer, but to provide
>> ourselves with an organised and orderly method of thinking out
particular
>> problems; and, after we have reached a provisional conclusion by
isolating
>> the complicating factors one by one, we have then to go back on
ourselves
>> and allow, as well as we can, for the probable interactions of the
factors
>> among themselves. It is a great fault of symbolic pseudo-mathematical
>> methods of formalising a system of economic analysis, such as we shall
set
>> down in section VI of this chapter, that they expressly assume strict
>> independence between the factors involved and lose all their cogency and
>> authority if this hypothesis is disallowed; whereas, in ordinary
discourse,
>> where we are not blindly manipulating but know all the time what we are
>> doing and what the words mean, we can keep 'at the back of our heads'
the
>> necessary reserves and qualifications and the adjustments which we shall
>> have to make later on, in a way in which we cannot keep complicated
partial
>> differentials 'at the back' of several pages of algebra which assume
that
>> they all vanish. Too large a proportion of recent 'mathematical'
economics
>> are merely concoctions, as imprecise as the initial assumptions they
rest
>> on, which allow the author to lose sight of the complexities and
>> interdependencies of the real world in a maze of pretentious and
unhelpful
>> symbols. (General Theory, pp. 297-8)
>