Herbert A. Simon Quotes
I started off thinking that maybe the social sciences ought to have the kinds of mathematics that the natural sciences had. That works a little bit in economics because they talk about costs, prices and quantities of goods.
Simon, Herbert A. Models of My Life. Basic Books, 1991.
This quotation illustrates why so many consider Mises a political philosopher rather than an economist. In the latter part of Mises life and career, advances in mathematics and its application to economics revolutionized the field of economics and left Mises behind. Nonetheless Mises’ contribution to the non-quantitative area of economics was substantial, and his influence on others was even greater.
This is an amazing quotation. It was not until the last 50 years that biologists have come to realize that mathematics is essential to their understanding of the science, just like chemistry and physics. For years biology was a science that did not require mathematics as a prerequisite for study. With the exception of a few holdouts, biology had come of age—an age predicted by Comte. This has placed more pressure on the high schools which used to counsel students that if they did not like mathematics or take it, they could go into biology. No longer is that reality.
Most classic socialists would not agree, but Deng’s approach created the most economically successful socialist economy in history.
Herbert Alexander Simon was an American economist, political scientist and cognitive psychologist, whose primary research interest was decision-making within organizations and is best known for the theories of "bounded rationality" and "satisficing". He received the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1978 and the Turing Award in 1975. His research was noted for its interdisciplinary nature and spanned across the fields of cognitive science, computer science, public administration, management, and political science. He was at Carnegie Mellon University for most of his career, from 1949 to 2001.
