by The truly scientific attitude I recall, with sadness, a comment made to me by the author of a well-known textbook. Upon being asked whether he accepted my analysis of demand theory as presented first in 1948, the reply was positive. He added that it would not be included in his advanced textbook because “it would upset too many things and be too disturbing, i.e., Dicta non movere.” So much for the acceptance of new scientific results and for a truly scientific attitude. Compare this with the attitude of von Neumann, who while teaching in 1931 a course on mathematical logic and on the foundations of mathematics, read Kurt Gödel’s just published paper containing his famous undecidability theorem, walked into his class, and said: “Forget what I taught you.
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The truly scientific attitude
I recall, with sadness, a comment made to me by the author of a well-known textbook. Upon being asked whether he accepted my analysis of demand theory as presented first in 1948, the reply was positive. He added that it would not be included in his advanced textbook because “it would upset too many things and be too disturbing, i.e., Dicta non movere.” So much for the acceptance of new scientific results and for a truly scientific attitude.
Compare this with the attitude of von Neumann, who while teaching in 1931 a course on mathematical logic and on the foundations of mathematics, read Kurt Gödel’s just published paper containing his famous undecidability theorem, walked into his class, and said: “Forget what I taught you. It was all wrong. I shall only teach you what Gödel has just published.”
Gödel’s incompleteness theorems raise important questions about the foundations of mathematics.
The most important concern is the question of how to select the specific systems of axioms that mathematics is supposed to be founded on. Gödel’s theorems irrevocably show that no matter what system is chosen, there will always have to be other axioms to prove previously unproven truths.
This, of course, ought to be of paramount interest for those mainstream economists who still adhere to the Bourbakian dream of constructing deductive-axiomatic economics with analytic truths that do not require empirical verification. Since Gödel showed that any complex axiomatic system is undecidable and incomplete, any such deductive-axiomatic economics will always consist of some undecidable statements. When not even able to fulfil the dream of a complete and consistent axiomatic foundation for mathematics, it’s totally incomprehensible that some people still think that could be achieved for economics.