Burn the Maths

'But I know I had a growing feeling in the later years of my work at the subject that a good mathematical theorem dealing with economic hypotheses was very unlikely to be good economics: and I went more and more on the rules---(1) Use mathematics as a short-hand language, rather than as an engine of inquiry. (2) Keep to them till you have done. (3) Translate into English. (4) Then illustrate by examples that are important in real life. (5) Burn the mathematics. (6) If you can't succeed in 4, burn 3.'

In academia there are many ways to be clever (and perhaps not too many to be wise). But why should one believe that intelligence ought to be rooted in schools or the university ? To say that it should be institutionalized is just crazy. There are other ways to be intelligent and intelligence isn't everything anyway. You can have a Ph.D. and still be a major league asshole. That probably doesn't capture the whole of it: can still be, and probably are.

Marshall, like other critics (Morishima) was himself a mathematical economist and so there's some weight to his comments.

It does appear that what counts is technical competence as well as the desire and ability to publish highly complex stuff in journals that no-one but other technicians can read and understand. God forbid that there should be public scrutiny of one's ideas! A 'clever' person who isn't also a self-publicist isn't really that clever after all. But what other kind of intelligence could there be if precision and "rigour" aren't all they're cracked up to be?

I think the first thing is to be aware of the history of one's subject ( a history of ideas). Then one might see that a lot of work is just (moderately) new wine in old bottles. Secondly, one should be aware of first principles, assumptions, understand the 'ways of approaching'; thirdly, one should be able to make connections-within a discipline and across them. Fourthly, one shouldn't be driven by theory or techniques (Marshall's 'engine of inquiry' point); fifthly, one should have some idea of what can and should, and what cannot and should not, be studied: the attempt at universal theorizing is dangerous. Having some idea of what one doesn't know is useful. Related to these points, I guess,  is the ability to say: "I do not know" and "we may never know". Sixth, abstraction and making generalizations is all well and good, but what's the point if you can't communicate those ideas except in a specialized, obtuse language?