Maurice Allais Quotes
All science is based on models, and every scientific model comprises three distinct stages: statement of well-defined hypotheses; deduction of all the consequences of these hypotheses, and nothing but these consequences; confrontation of these consequences with observed data.
Allais, Maurice. "Lines of Research in Economic Science." Les Prix Nobel. The Nobel Prizes 1988, edited by Tore Frängsmyr, Nobel Foundation, 1989.
This quotation illustrates and important aspect of science. Specifically, that theory, something ephemeral and impractical to the layman, has immense practical power in developing great scientific and technological breakthroughs. The result of this breakthrough was large lenses that could make lights more powerful and make lighthouses much more safe. Even the atomic bomb was really developed from theory and then engineered for practical use.
Maurice Félix Charles Allais was a French physicist and economist, the 1988 winner of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences "for his pioneering contributions to the theory of markets and efficient utilization of resources", for Maurice Allais contribution, along with John Hicks (Value and Capital, 1939) and Paul Samuelson (The Foundations of Economic Analysis, 1947), to neoclassical synthesis. They formalize the self-regulation of markets, that Keynes refuted, while reiterating some of his ideas.
