(economics, philosophy)

I’ve been working with framing the debate against naive mathematics as similar to the debate against naive empiricism, because economics makes use of both naive empiricism and naive mathematics.

For a very long time – since at least the greeks – we have advanced the fallacy that the universe is written in mathematical language. And we have advanced the fallacy that mathematics provides the gold standard by which to test our observations and theories.

But, skipping ahead a bit, mathematics consists of a set of operations with which we maintain constant relations, and where we describe aggregates OF UNDERLYING OPERATIONS (transformations), without knowing the constitution of those underlying operations.

So:

  1. Conceptually identifiable phenomenon.

  2. Empirically measurable phenomenon.

  3. Mathematical description of patterns of those phenomenon.

  4. Operational construction of those phenomenon.

  5. Information

In much of human inquiry we have been incorrectly categorizing the problem as the discovery of patterns we observe, rather than the problem of operations that constitute them.

  1. Information

  2. Operations

  3. Mathematics

  4. Computers

  5. “Recipes”

  6. “Language”

Curt Doolittle

The Propertarian Institute

Kiev Ukraine.