On Progress and Perfection in the Arts and Sciences

Abstract

All economic development has one aspect of quantitative increase and another of qualitative improvement. Qualitative change is much more difficult to model than increased productivity. The mathematical methods through which economics asserted its supremacy among the social sciences are not in favour of formulating qualitative change, as it involves increasing diversity rather than increasing numbers of well-defined objects. Some of the most promising ideas about the nature of development, Smith’s division of labour, and Böhm-Bawerk’s lengthening of roundabout production, were never translated into convincing mathematical models. Even when the initial interests of the researchers may have been to find out something about qualitative improvements, they often end up modelling quantitative increase instead.