Frasi di Kenneth Boulding
1 0Kenneth Boulding
Data di nascita: 18. Gennaio 1910
Data di morte: 18. Marzo 1993
Kenneth Ewart Boulding è stato un economista, pacifista e poeta inglese naturalizzato statunitense.
Mistico religioso, devoto quacchero, scienziato dei sistemi e filosofo, è stato cofondatore della teoria generale dei sistemi, fondatore di numerosi progetti in economia e scienze sociali. Era sposato con Elise Boulding M., sociologa e tra le maggiori contributrici della creazione accademica della disciplina di peace and conflict studies, o polemologia.
Frasi Kenneth Boulding
„Economic development does not consist merely in the piling up of things, but in the accumulation of new kinds of things“
— Kenneth E. Boulding
Context: The success of Japanese development is due simply to the fact that Japan devoted a substantial portion of its resources to the growth industry, and particularly to the human resources and then commended Max Weber's emphasis on hard work and thrift.
All the law and the prophets of economic development can be summed up in the old proverb that "where there's a will there's a way". The way indeed is absurdly easy and is well known. It consists merely in putting resources into growth. What could be simpler and easier! the problem however, is the will, and this. I think, we understand very little. The whole cultural milieu of society plays a role in the process of developing its will, and it is hard to separate the determining factors. A widespread puritan ethic, as Max Weber pointed out, is undoubtedly an asset, if this leads people to place a high value on hard work and thrift. On the other hand, puritanism often goes along with a resistance to social change and an unwillingness to innovate outside a narrow field of technology, and thrift alone can often lead to uncreative forms of accumulation or even to unemployment and depression. Mere accumulation is not enough. Economic development does not consist merely in the piling up of things, but in the accumulation of new kinds of things.
p. 116. partly cited in: (2013) "[http://www.deirdremccloskey.com/editorials/boulding.php What Boulding Said Went Wrong with Economics, A Quarter Century On]"
„The process of ... is the final act in the economic drama“
— Kenneth E. Boulding
Context: The process of... is the final act in the economic drama
p. 614 (rev. ed. 1948) as cited in: Andrew McMeekin (2002) Innovation by Demand. p. 131
„Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist.“
— Kenneth E. Boulding
Attributed to Kenneth Boulding in: United States. Congress. House (1973) Energy reorganization act of 1973: Hearings, Ninety-third Congress, first session, on H.R. 11510. p. 248
„[Even the mechanism can be endowed with an image. Thus] the thermostat has an image of the outside world in the shape of information regarding its temperature. It has also a value system in the sense of the ideal temperature at which it is set. Its behavior is directed towards the receipt of information which will bring its image and its value systems together“
— Kenneth E. Boulding
p. 22 as cited in: Robert A. Solo (1994) "[http://www.jstor.org/stable/4226892 Kenneth Ewart Boulding: 1910-1993. An Appreciation]". In: Journal of Economic Issues. Vol. 28, No. 4 (Dec., 1994), pp. 1187-1200
„Economists can take a good deal of credit for the stabilization policies which have been followed in most Western countries since 1945 with considerable success. It is easy to generate a euphoric and self-congratulatory mood when one compares the twenty years after the first World War, 1919-39, with the twenty years after the second, 1945-65. The first twenty years were a total failure; the second twenty years, at least as far as economic policy is concerned, have been a modest success. We have not had any great depression; we have not had any serious financial collapse; and on the whole we have had much higher rates of development in most parts of the world than we had in the 1920’s and 1930’s, even though there are some conspicuous failures. Whether the unprecedented rates of economic growth of the last twenty years, for instance in Japan and Western Europe, can be attributed to economics, or whether they represent a combination of good luck in political decision making with the expanding impact of the natural and biological sciences on the economy, is something we might argue. I am inclined to attribute a good deal to good luck and non-economic forces, but not all of it, and even if economics only contributed 10 percent, this would amount to a very handsome rate of return indeed, considering the very small amount of resources we have really put into economics.“
— Kenneth E. Boulding
p. 9
„It is almost as hard to define mathematics as it is to define economics, and one is tempted to fall back on the famous old definition attributed to, “Economics is what economists do,” and say that mathematics is what mathematicians do. A large part of mathematics deals with the formal relations of quantities or numbers.“
— Kenneth E. Boulding
p. 97
„We should always bear in mind that numbers represent a simplification of reality.“
— Kenneth E. Boulding
p. 96 quoted in: Andrew Mearman (2011) "[http://www.ntu.ac.uk/nbs/document_uploads/109014.pdf Three cheers for Kenneth Boulding!]"
„Knowledge exists in minds, not in books. Before what has been found can be used by practitioners, someone must organize it, integrate it, extract the message“
— Kenneth E. Boulding
Attributed to Kenneth Boulding (1976) in John T. Partington, Terry Orlick, John H. Salmela (1982) Sport in perspective. p. 94
„My father, William C. Boulding, was a working plumber in business for himself. At the back of the house was the yard, a corrugated iron shed full of pipes, wrenches, and blow torches, and other mysterious and rather frightening apparatus. He had two faithful employees, Billy Fox, who was moody and regarded as a little queer, and Billy Sankey, who was short and cheerful. They and my father always smelled strongly of some kind of grease. My father was a gentle man. I never I never heard his voice raised in anger. He had had a very hard childhood. His father died soon after he was born; his mother married again, a man known in the family legends as "Pa Hardacre," about whom endless stories were told. He was a bigamist. He drove my father out of the house at the age of twelve to earn his own living on the streets of Liverpool. He constantly mistreated my half-aunts, Ethel and Rosie. He died before I was born, but my mother's accounts of him sounded like something out of Dickens.“
— Kenneth E. Boulding
p. 5
„One of the most important skills of the economist, therefore, is that of simplification of the model. Two important methods of simplification have been developed by economists. One is the method of partial equilibrium analysis (or microeconomics), generally associated with the name of Alfred Marshall and the other is the method of aggregation (or macro-economics), associated with the name of John Maynard Keynes.“
— Kenneth E. Boulding
p. 19
„[This book] is intended as a text from which the student can learn and the teacher can teach the methods and results of economic analysis. It also seeks to be a contribution to the development and systematization of the body of economic analysis itself. These purposes are not separate. The task of presenting a systematic, orderly, and accurate account of economic analysis is identical with the task of preparing the material for teaching. It must be emphasized, however, that the purpose of this work is not primarily to entertain the student, or to enable him to regurgitate appropriate material into examination books, or to learn a few pat phrases, or to indoctrinate him with an abstract discipline which he will never use. Economics is like photography in this respect, that under-exposure is less desirable than no exposure at all.“
— Kenneth E. Boulding
p. xv
