quinta-feira, 29 de março de 2012

Nada há de mais valioso que uma boa teoria

Estive a ler o Boletim Económico do Banco de Portugal da Primavera, que genericamente agrava as anteriores do Outono, e dei conta do artigo "Segmentação" (do mercado de trabalho, páginas 7-28), assinado por Mário Centeno e Álvaro A. Novo, cuja leitura me impeliu a ir procurar a seguinte passagem, da autoria de Ralph Raico (meu realce):
«The economics profession has for some time contended that with the "tools" of higher mathematics the contemporary economist can rise above the crude squabbles of the older nonmathematical forms of economic discourse; that it could end controversy in the discipline by force of the undebatable rigor of formal mathematics. But today the precision, the decisiveness, and the relevance of much of this "higher" economics are beginning to come under attack. Students are beginning to wonder whether it really helps our understanding of inflation and unemployment to master Laplace transforms, matrix algebra, differential equations, or linear programming. Is it not possible that these fancy techniques can no longer plausibly be considered to be tools of the economist, but have become our masters? Is it not conceivable that the exclusive reliance on those problems that lend themselves to these techniques, to these "muscles," has made the profession not stronger, but muscle-bound? Have we the courage to admit that we have let our preoccupation with technique transform the most advanced and important of the social sciences into an exercise in sterility, into a truly dismal science?»

Libertarian Review, Setembro de 1981

Sem comentários: