On connecting socialism and mathematics: Dirk Struik, Jan Burgers, and Jan Tinbergen
On the background of some career and other biographical information, the article discusses the different ways which Dirk Struik (b. 1894), Jan M. Burgers (1895-1981) and Jan Tinbergen (1903-1994) -- all three students of Paul Ehrenfest -- combined socialist politics with mathematics. It is concluded that ``Struik's views on mathematics were the most radical, asserting that mathematical conceptions can better be understood in conjunction with larger social and intellectual processes. By contrast, of the three his mathematics changed the least under the influence of external factors. [\dots] Burgers and Tinbergen illustrate [how] the social context affects a mathematician's work. Their novel ideas helped launch a new paradigm for using mathematics to address social problems, viz. the notion of mathematical modeling'' (abstract, p. 280). The detailed information provided in the article, however, not only provides the basis for this conclusion but also suggests further remarks and inferences. Firstly, Struik and the young Burgers shared a radical political commitment, seeing political activity first of all as an obligation -- most forcefully in Struik's case; later in life, Burgers became engaged in socially responsible planning of scientific research. Tinbergen, (quasi) Nobel prize for economics in 1969, is cited for speaking in his dissertation instead of political ambition. As the others, he considered himself a socialist, but already from his political debut in the twenties this simply meant government management of the market -- later, his ``socialism'' came to be identified with the application of econometrics, which was to define not only political means but also the social goals to be pursued (p. 301). What is seen by the author as Tinbergen's innovative combination of mathematics and politics is thus simply a claim (strongly disputed by certain other schools of economics, not to speak of sociologists and political scientists) that Walrasian-Paretian welfare economics can be expanded into a tool for practical social planning and management, which may ultimately replace politics. The macroeconomic model, as it is known, was based on empirically determined correlations and linearizing simplifications (assumed independence of actually interdependent variables) and devoid of ontological commitment. This notion of the model, it appears, is almost as different as can be from the one developed by Burgers in his studies of turbulent motion. Based upon Ehrenfest, Boltzmann and Hertz, Burgers' notion is anti-relativistic and ontologically committed, and with good reasons pointed out (p. 297 n. 4) to parallel Lenin's attack on the empiriocriticist abolition of ``matter'', i.e. external reality. Burgers' ``models'' were called thus because they are ``simplified and provisional expressions of insight'' in truth (p. 298). The ultimate victory of the ``Tinbergen model'' is illustrated by the absence of reactions to Burgers' philosophical book `Experience and Conceptual Activity' (1956, English 1965). Struik's mathematics is seen as relatively uninfluenced by his politics because ``he stayed within domains of mathematics where applications predominantly were done in the classical style'' (p. 298), which in itself presupposes a Tinbergenian view on what the connection should be; what is said about its contents is not pertinent to the conclusion. More informative is the discussion of his ``sociology of science'', where `Yankee Science in the Making' is identified as the high point and ``his most personal scholarly work''.
scientific article; zbMATH DE number 672363