Ann Pettifor — On brilliant, neglected women economists – for Woman’s Hour

While there have been women since Joan Robinson that have won prizes including the Nobel Prize, Palgrave’s editors are quite clear: Joan Robinson was the only woman among the great economists.

I am a great fan of Joan Robinson. She was a philosopher.

Robinson had avoided mathematical modeling like the plague. She once famously said: ”I never learned math, so I had to think.

There is nothing wrong with using mathematics as a tool. Joan Robinson had to do it in order to think about economics. But she did it in her head. This is indicative of a high degree of mathematical literacy rather than ignorance of math. But when math becomes substance, then something is wrong. 

Math is entirely tautologous and says nothing specifically about the world, only the logical structure for understanding it. Math is a branch of logic and it is useful for dealing with quantity. There is  much more to logic than math, but logic is also entirely tautologous. Logic and math must be informed by both keen observation and correct judgment. 

Robinson got that. She and Piero Sraffa stuck it to Paul Samuelson and Robert Solow in the Cambridge capital debate, Samuelson having been the champion of mathematical modeling in economics. Robinson and Sraffa did this on logical grounds.

Debtonation
On brilliant, neglected women economists – for Woman’s Hour

Ann Pettifor