IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/cambje/v41y2017i5p1367-1390..html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Formalising economics: social change, values, mechanics and mathematics in economic discourse

Author

Listed:
  • Dimitris Milonakis

Abstract

The mathematisation and formalisation of economic science has been one of the most important features of the development of economic science in the latter part of the twentieth century. What were the causes behind this ubiquitous mathematisation of economic science? Recent scholarship places excessive emphasis on the role and prestige of mathematics as a scientific tool. In this paper we argue this is inadequate, not least because it fails to account for the whole classical era when mathematical economists failed to have any impact. Explaining this failure is one of the main aims of this paper. Most accounts focus mostly on the intellectual factors involved failing to do justice to what amounts to a multifaceted and complicated phenomenon involving social, economic, political, intellectual, normative and institutional factors. Partly redressing the balance by bringing to the fore the various factors involved is the other prime aim of this paper.

Suggested Citation

  • Dimitris Milonakis, 2017. "Formalising economics: social change, values, mechanics and mathematics in economic discourse," Cambridge Journal of Economics, Cambridge Political Economy Society, vol. 41(5), pages 1367-1390.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:cambje:v:41:y:2017:i:5:p:1367-1390.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/cje/bex045
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Sergios Tzotzes & Dimitris Milonakis, 2021. "Paradigm Change or Assimilation? The Case of Behavioral Economics," Review of Radical Political Economics, Union for Radical Political Economics, vol. 53(1), pages 173-192, March.
    2. Stavros A. Drakopoulos, 2024. "Value Judgements, Positivism and Utility Comparisons in Economics," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 189(3), pages 423-437, January.
    3. Thiago Dumont Oliveira & Marwil J. Dávila-Fernández, 2020. "From modelmania to datanomics? The rise of mathematical and quantitative methods in three top economics journals," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 123(1), pages 51-70, April.
    4. Stavros, Drakopoulos, 2021. "The Relation of Neoclassical Economics to other Disciplines: The case of Physics and Psychology," MPRA Paper 106597, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:cambje:v:41:y:2017:i:5:p:1367-1390.. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/cje .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.