"Holy entropy! It's boiling!" --G. Gamow Here's a couple interesting passages from Mario Bunge's "Chalratanism in Academia." I am hoping to generate interesting replies--any will be welcome. The ALL CAPS lines are my emphasis.
"To paraphrase Groucho Marx: the trademark of modern culture is science; if you can fake this, you've got it made. Hence the drive to clothe groundless speculations...with the gown of science. ...[T]he academic pseudosciences abide by reason, or at least seem at first sight to do so. Their main flaws are that their constructions are fuzzy and do not match reality. (Some of them, SUCH AS NEO-AUSTRIAN ECONOMICS, EVEN CLAIM THAT THEIR THEORIES ARE TRUE A PRIORI.) Let us take a small sample.... "Example 1: Pseudomathematical Symbolism "Vilfredo Pareto, an original, insightful, and erudite student of society...listed a number of 'residues' or 'forces,' among them sentiments, abilities, dispositions, and myths. He assumed tacitly that 'residues' are numerical variables. But, since he failed to define them, the symbols he used are mere abbreviations for intuitive notions. "...Professor Gary Becker, a Nobel laureate at the University of Chicago, is famous for his economic approach to the study of human behavior. Unfortunatley he leans heavily on undefined utility functions and tends to pepper his writings with symbols that do not always represent concepts. For example, a key formula of his theory of social interactions reads thus: 'R = Di + h.' Here i labels an arbitrary individual, and R is supposed to stand for 'the opinion of i held by other persons in the same occupation'; and 'h measures the effect of i's efforts, and Di the level of R when i makes no effort; that is, Di measures i's "social environment."' BECKER CHRISTENS THESE 'FUNCTIONS' BUT DOES NOT SPECIFY THEM. CONSEQUENTLY HE ADDS WORDS, NOT FUNCTIONS. WE ARE NOT EVEN TOLD WHAT THE DIMENSIONS AND UNITS OF THESE PSEUDOMAGNITUDES ARE. Therefore, we would not know how to measure the corresponding properties and so to test for the adequacy of the formula. "Of course, PSEUDOQUANTITATION IS SUFFICIENT BUT NOT NECESSARY TO ENGAGE IN PSEUDOSCIENCE. An alternative is to relate precise magnitudes in imprecise ways, such as 'Y is some function of X,' where X and Y are well defined but the function is left unspecified. Milton Friedman's 'theoretical framework for monetary analysis' is a case in point. Indeed, it revolves around three undefined function symbols (f, g, and l). HENCE IT MAY AT MOST PASS FOR A RESEARCH PROPOSAL, AN AIM OF WHICH WOULD BE TO FIND THE PRECISE FORM OF THE HOPEFUL FUNCTIONS IN QUESTION. But the project does not seem to have been carried out. And in any case, given the bankruptcy of monetarism, the project does not seem worthy of being carried out. "Example 3: Subjective Utility "Most of the utility 'functions' occurring in neoclassical microeconomics...are not well defined--as Henri Poincare pointed out to Leon Walras. In fact, the only conditions required of them is that they be twice differentiable, the first derivative being positive and the second negative. Obviously, infinitely many functions satisfy these mild requirements. THIS OFTEN SUFFICES IN SOME BRANCHES OF PURE MATHEMATICS.... BUT THE FACTUAL (OR EMPIRICAL) SCIENCES ARE MORE DEMANDING: HERE ONE USES ONLY FUNCTIONS THAT ARE DEFINED EXPLICITLY...OR IMPLICITLY. Finally, experimental studies have shown that preferences and subjective estimates of utility and risk do not satisfy the assumptions of expected utility theory. "In short, THE USE OF UTILITY FUNCTIONS IS OFTEN MATHEMATICALLY SLOPPY AND EMPIRICALLY UNWARRANTED. Now, rational choice models make heavy use of both subjective utilities and subjective probabilities, as well as of the simplistic hypothesis that selfishness is the only motivation of human behavior. Not suprisingly, NONE OF THESE MODELS FITS THE FACT. Hence, although at first sight they look scientific, as a matter of fact they are pseudoscientific." Thoughts? -jsh __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? HotJobs - Search Thousands of New Jobs http://www.hotjobs.com
