The Good and the Bad Uses of Mathematics

The world that people had thought themselves living in-a world rich with colour and sound..speaking everywhere of purposive harmony and creative ideals -was consigned now into minute corners in the brains of scattered organic beings. The really important world outside was a world hard, cold, colourless, silent, and dead-a world of quantity, a world of mathematically computable motions in mechanical regularity.
----E.A. Burtt

'..because mathematics is powerful it will always become an object of fetishism,..propositions congealed in the form of 'theorems' are not more than logical conclusions from assumed hypotheses, but create the illusion of being scientific discoveries. Mathematical economists construct a mountain as it were from these sorts of quasi-scientific pieces, and worship as gods those who have contributed to making the mountain a high one.

However beautiful or however elegant the whole system may be, those who devote themselves to a learning which is useless are inevitably just playing at a pastime, and it is likely that before long its learning comes to a standstill.
---M.Morishima

'The master economist must possess a rare combination of gifts. He must reach a high standard in several different directions..He must be mathematician, historian, statesman, philosopher-to some degree. He must understand symbols and speak in terms of the general, and touch abstract and concrete in the same flight of thought. he must study the present in light of the past for the purpose of the future.'
--Keynes.

I don't think this applies just to economics. I know some computer science people who are fantastically clever in their own fields but major league donkeys in all other regards. What's the point if you can't talk like a human being to other human beings? (Wish I had Said's 'Representations' with me now). A frog at the bottom of a well may use impeccable logic but still have a very narrow view of the world.

In a discussion with M last week on his game theory paper:

Yeah, sure, but trust can be looked at in many different ways.

M: Aren't you a scientist though?

A what?!

M: Er..I mean, a social scientist?

But M, why should we limit our thinking that way? If we believe in pluralism, in freedom, then we should also believe in freedom of thought?

M: Isn't that irrational?

In some case, perhaps it is not rational. But it seems to me that the attempt must be made to think of freedom and reason together.

I dunno, I get the feeling that some people go to university and are brainwashed, or at least dazzled by contemporary thought. The more complex, the better. How else would you show intelligence? So, you've learnt a few tricks. It ain't that big a deal. You know a few fancy words but what, exactly, are you saying?