Mathematics boot camps functioned to suppress questioning of economic orthodoxy
Evidence
The excuse tendered to repress this demand was that the students needed still more mathematics preparation, more statistics, and more tutelage in “theory,” which meant in practice a boot camp regimen consisting of endless working of problem sets, problem sets, and more problem sets, until the poor tyros were so dizzy they didn’t have the spunk left to interrogate the masses of journal articles they had struggled to absorb. How this encouraged students to become acquainted with the economy was a bit of a mystery—or maybe it telegraphed the neoclassical lesson that you didn’t need to attend to the specifics of actual existing economies. It was brainwashing, pure and simple, carried out under the banner of rigor. — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 460
Categorization
- XREF: connects to: Economic heterodoxy declined because graduate training filtered out non-economists — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 64; Mainstream economics dismissed dissenting figures for lacking mathematical rhetoric — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making…, 1772; Professional exclusion of heterodox economists makes neoclassical orthodoxy self-reinforcing — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 824 (+1 more)
Broader Connections
- Mainstream economics dismissed dissenting figures for lacking mathematical rhetoric
#corroborates(0.85) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 1772 - Economic heterodoxy declined because graduate training filtered out non-economists
#complicates(0.70) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 64 - Professional exclusion of heterodox economists makes neoclassical orthodoxy self-reinforcing
#exemplifies(0.70) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 824 - Mathematics offers its practitioners refuge from a mad world
#qualifies(0.70) — G. H. Hardy, A Mathematician’s Apology, 281