~. --~ . . .. . ~., \'• '-•' '"''·· , . ,,. ,, .,~, .. ,~. ... '"- , • . ,.
·r
case ~tudy
~athiness and physics envy in the
human sciences
b \' 110 mics is som~times proclaimed the most
n~, 11\.lus .,mong th~ humnn sciences, at least
r~t'l-on01nists. The issue of the supposed
p .,,ur of economics is our entry point into the
d•-..,·ussion about the contestable boundaries
rd ,rt't'll the natural and human sciences,
.i ,,! the exchange between both of them and
1r,1thematics.
There is an implicit pecking orde r among the
social sciences, and it see ms to be dominated
by economics. For starters, economists see
themselves at or near the top of the disciplinary
hierarchy. In a survey conducted in the early
2000s, [David) Colander found that?? per cent of
economics graduate students in elite programs
agree with the statement that "economics is the
most scientific of the social sciences". Some fifteen
years ago, Richard Freeman speculated on the
origins of this conviction. His assessment wa s
candid: 'sociologists and political scientists have
less powerful analytical tools and know less than
we do, or so we believe. By scores on the Graduate
Record Examination and other criteria, our field
attracts students stronger than theirs, and our
~,
courses are more mathematically demanding'.
(Fourcade et al 2015)
Some who believe in the rigour of economi~s
think it reflects a natural order of social reality.
Others might think this false, even bizarre, .
given the discipline's repeated failure t~ predict
and prevent economic crises. Critics pomt out
th~t thii, chasing of rigour has led to an over-
tehanco on abstract matht'-'matical models,
wh·1ch, rather tha n prod ucing pred'ict·10 n~
."
about
..
th (! futu_rc, actua ll y obscure a pseudo-scwntific
thc hun\an sciences mwigah' and n'Mkr SC'tli;t of 1
the C()nlplc-xity of thl' world?
m~thodolngy. And critics have bt)f•n saying
th1s for scver~,l decades, but change has lx'Cn
slow. The 2009 global recession that wipt'd out
millions of dollnrs o.f savings, ~md precipitat~d
a debt crisis in Southern Europe, came just six
years after a leading economist had proclnimcd
that the "central problem of depression-
prevention has been solved" (Lucas quoted in
Krugman 2009). Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman,
one of the most trenchant critics among the
leading economists, has summed up as follows:
"the economics profession went astray because
economists, as a group, mistook beauty, clad
in impressive-looking mathematics, for truth"
(Krugman 2009). Why were they impressed by
mathematics?
"Mathiness" as a term was devised by Paul
Romer, an Economics Nobel Laureate, who
originally used it to describe a style of work
that "lets academic politics masquerade
as science" (Romer 2015) by camouflaging
political arguments in an ambiguous mix
of words and symbols, natural and formal
language, and theoretical and empirical
content. He argues that mathiness makes it
difficult to access and critique the economics
discourse, and gives the work an unearned
sense of authority. Both of these-access and
authority-are significant knowledge issues.
According to Krugman, there are strong
political and business incentives that propel
an idealized vision of economies composed
of fully rational agents-despite plenty
of evidence to the contrary-and "fancy
equations" have obscured these less~tenable
model assumptions in both academia and
policy. To make his long argument short,
Krugman asserts that mathincss is used
to deiend faulty economics, including the
neoliberal paradigm .
sciences
,,
The central cause of the profession's failurewas
the desire for an all-encompassing, intellectually
elegant approach that also gave economists a
,,
chance to show off their mathematical prowess.
(Krugman 2009]
Both Krugman and Romer have said that
mathiness can conceal political arguments
in naturalistic or empirical clothing. This is
especially problematic because, in the words
of John Rapley, a political economist at the
University of Cambridge, "scientists are
supposed to reach their conclusions after doing
research and weighing the evidence but, in
economics, conclusions can come first, with
economists gravitating towards a thesis that
fits their moral worldview" (Rapley 2018).
Dressing these theories with mathiness can
make them more convincing, or at least more
difficult to critique.
But is there evidence for the claim that
mathematics lends the human sciences an aura
of authority, deserved or otherwise? Consider,
for a minute, the pseudo-scientific claims,
supported by statistics, that are regularly
invoked in everything from advertising
to political debates. One is reminded how
William Thomson, a renowned 19th-century
scientist known for his work on the laws
of thermodynamics, had stated. "When you
can measure what you are speaking about and
express it in numbers you know something
about it; but when you cannot measure it .. . in
numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and
unsatisfactory kind."
The implications of measurement are explored
in section III. The success of physics and
chemistry in explaining our world may have
contributed to a perception that mathematical
formulas have an authoritative force. Within
the human sciences there is even a term for
this, "physics envy", used to criticize the
overuse of complicated mathematics to appear
more rigorous.
Mathematics can guarantee the sernbJan
. th .
of science, and some times at 1s enough
Ce
,,
to convince laypeople and academics alik
e.
Economics has always ~een an ethical and social
exercise, its purpose being to produce the rules
by which a community organises its production.
It's not accidental that Adam Smith, whose work
The Wealth of Nations (1776] is often seen as
the founding text of economics, was a moral
philosopher. Yet ever after, it was the holy grail of
economists to make their art into a science, using
it to uncover the codes supposedly buried in their
heart of human existence. They experimented
with mathematics and pondered Charles Darwin's
revolution in biology, but it would be the late
19th century before economics finally found a
model for itself. It found it in physics. But ... the
social nature of human beings makes any laws
of behaviour tentative and contextual. In fact,
the very term 'social science' is probably best
seen as an oxymoron ... in the 1970s, the Nobel
laureate Wassily Leontief warned against the drift
that had begun in economics towards what was
,,
subsequently called 'physics envy'.
[Rapley 2018]
Krugman and Romer have applied the
mathiness critique to their community of
professional economists, but it has been
invoked in other disciplines in the human
sciences, too. Steven Pinker's book The
Better Angels of Our Nature (2011) used a vast
statistical analysis to argue that the present is
the most peaceful time in human history, and
impressed a wide global audience including,
apparently, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates
and the philosopher Peter Singer. However,
Pinker's methods were publicly criticized by
Nassim Taleb, an outspoken statistician, aulhor
and professor at New York University. To what
extent could a layperson access and critique
Pinker's methods? How would we know
whether Taleb is right? For those of us who are
mathematical non-experts, it can be difficult
to judge who is right and wrong, when bot~
sides appear to hold heavy-weight academic
redentials. But an even bigger danger would
-
to throw our hands up in defeat.
Making connections
Understanding statistics as a layperson
The opaqueness of the statistics behind knowledge
claims becomes an ethical issue when these claims
are made in law, health or other domains of human
decision-making with significant consequences.
Chapter 11 explores knowledge issues with the use
of statistics in section IV.
It would also be dangerous to disregard the
benefits of mathematical reasoning and clearly
a balance needs to be struck in the human
,,
sciences. Romer states the following.
Ifthe participants in a discussion are committed
to science, mathematical theory can encourage a
unique clarity and precision in both reasoning and
communication. It would be a serious setback for
our discipline if economists lose their commitment
to carefu l mathematical reasoning.
,,
[Romer 2015]
The other side of the discussion should not
be neglected. There are disciplines such
as econophysics and social physics that
effectively blur the boundaries between
the natural and human sciences, using
mathematical tools inspired by physics to
understand and explain human behaviour
and interactions in crowds, markets and
other complex social systems. The term
"econophysics" was introduce~ by H. Eugene
Stanley, following his observation that a very
large number of papers on stock markets were
written by physicists.
Counter-cl1lm
Anumber of disciplines have wholeheartedly
embraced mathematical tools and applied models
from physics to economic problems.
For example, the physicist Bikas Chakrabarti
has applied the kinetic theory of gas to models
of markets, and co-authored a book entitled
Econophysics of Income & Wealth Distributions. His
is not a one-off example; the list of physics-trained
economists is too long to provide here, and includes
luminaries such as Jan Tinbergen, the first ever
recipient of the Nobel Prize in Economics, and widely
considered one of the most influential economists
of the 20th century.
With the arrival of "big data", social scientists
are hoping that analyses of huge market
data sets, powered by statistical tools and
machine learning, will reveal insights about
human behaviour. Whether these insights
can be generalized into human laws remains to
be seen.
For example, financial economics has been
a particular focus for quantitative research
inspired by physics, but behavioural economics
has not. Some of the criticisms voiced by
Romer and Krugman allude to the fact that
quantitative methods may have spread too far,
too quickly and without enough consideration,
which may well be a reflection of their success,
not failure. It would also be a mistake to
describe economics as too "mathy" or anything
else because, as we have seen, it is not a
monolithic discipline but a field consisting
of varied subdisciplines with considerable
differences of methodology.