Bourbaki's Destructive Influence on the Mathematization of Economics

K. Vela Velupillai

No 1201, ASSRU Discussion Papers from ASSRU - Algorithmic Social Science Research Unit

Abstract: The first appearance of a reference to a Bourbaki mathematical result was the spoof by D.D. Kosambi, published in the first volume of the Bulletin of the Academy of Sciences of the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh, eighty years ago, although it was not the first reference to Bourbaki in a mathematical context. In mathematical economics there seems to be an increasing identification of Debreu’s mathematization of economics with Bourbakism, although the Post WW II mathematics of general equilibrium theory can be shown to be consistent also with the contributions of the Polish School of Mathematics in the interwar period. In this paper an attempt is made to summarise the story of the emergence of Bourbakism, originating in India, and its recent demise as well as how it played a destructive role in mathematising economics in one, uncompromisingly nonconstructive, mode.

Keywords: Bourbakism; Polish School of Mathematics; Hilbert’s Dogma; Debreu; Mathematical Economics. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: B23 C02 C69 D50 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his, nep-hme and nep-hpe
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.assru.economia.unitn.it/files/DP_1_2012_I.pdf (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 500 Can't connect to www.assru.economia.unitn.it:80 (No such host is known. )

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:trn:utwpas:1201

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in ASSRU Discussion Papers from ASSRU - Algorithmic Social Science Research Unit Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by assru.tm@gmail.com ().