Saturday, March 7, 2009

Schumpeter quote of the day

On his own, he performed daily exercises in calculus and tried to master advanced techniques such as matrix algebra. He even raised the question of a new type of math that would capture the dynamic changes he saw as the heart of capitalism. One diary entry of 1948 mentions, with a question mark "Evolutionary math?" - a tool that could do for his own system what conventional math had done for Walras's static equilibrium. But there was no evolutionary math at that time in sense that Schumpeter meant, and there is still not enough today to "operationalize" his system thoroughly. Schumpeter knew that he had little talent in mathmenatics, but he continued to challenge himself and enjoy the chase. "Whatever other advantages math may have," he wrote in his diary, "it is certainly the purest of human pleasures."


via Twenty Cent Paradigms

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Which brings to mind this:

http://xkcd.com/435/