Nothing fails like success because we don't learn from it. We learn only from failure.
Kenneth E. BouldingRead
Mathematics brought rigor to Economics. Unfortunately, it also brought mortis.
Interpretation
Mathematics adds precision to economics, but it can also lead to a lifeless and overly rigid approach.
In this quote, Kenneth E. Boulding highlights the dual role of mathematics in economics. While it enhances the discipline by introducing rigor and structure, it can also result in a mechanical application of theories that strips economics of its more humanistic and dynamic aspects, rendering it somewhat lifeless or 'dead' in practical application.
In practice
In a lecture on the intersection of math and economics, one might say, 'As Boulding aptly put it, mathematics can bring rigor to economics but beware of the mortis it might bring.'
Nothing fails like success because we don't learn from it. We learn only from failure.
As long as man was small in numbers and limited in technology, he could realistically regard the earth as an infinite reservoir, an infinite source of inputs and an infinite cesspool for outputs. Today we can no longer make this assumption. Earth has become a space ship, not only in our imagination but also in the hard realities of the social, biological, and physical system in which man is enmeshed.
Economics has been incurably growth-oriented and addicted to everybody growing richer, even at the cost of exhaustion of resources and pollution of the environment.
Are we to regard the world of nature simply as a storehouse to be robbed for the immediate benefit of man? ... Does man have any responsibility for the preservation of a decent balance in nature, for the preservation of rare species, or even for the indefinite continuance of his race?
Only mathematics and mathematical logic can say as little as the physicist means to say.
The ride to orbit was impressive, as it always is. But once I got on board the space station, it really felt like I was visiting an old home; it felt very comfortable.
In my Nobel lecture, I suggested we had until the year 2000 to tame the population monster, and then food shortages would take us under. Now I believe we have a little longer.
Everybody who's a physician, who makes vaccines, who wants to find the cure for cancer. Everybody who wants to do any medical good for humankind got the passion for that before he or she was 10.
I think it is a peculiarity of myself that I like to play about with equations, just looking for beautiful mathematical relations which maybe don't have any physical meaning at all. Sometimes they do._x000D_ _x000D_ At age 60.
It stands to the everlasting credit of science that by acting on the human mind it has overcome man's insecurity before himself and before nature.
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