ECONOMIC SCIENCE

When the Econometric Society was founded in 1930 to promote mathematical and statistical work in economics, its constitution echoed a new view of what it meant to be scientific:

For the creators of the Econometric Society, to be scientific was to derive results rigorously, using mathematical methods to achieve greater rigour than would be possible using verbal analysis. Scientific rigour meant logical rigour, dictating that the economics be concerned with developing and analysing precisely specified mathematical models. Rigour in economic theory therefore meant simplifying problems so that they could be formulated as sets of equations, which could then be manipulated using suitable mathematical techniques. Propositions in economic theory could thus be as rigorous as the mathematical techniques that were employed. The assumptions might be arbitrary and abstract, but the results derived from them were rigorous.

This was very different from the view held by many economists, especially in the United States, in the interwar period, when scientific rigour meant ensuring that scientific theories were firmly rooted in the real world.