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Université Du Québec À Montréal Edwin B. Wilson Aux Origines De L UNIVERSITÉ DU QUÉBEC À MONTRÉAL EDWIN B. WILSON AUX ORIGINES DE L’ÉCONOMIE MATHÉMATIQUE DE PAUL SAMUELSON: ESSAIS SUR L’HISTOIRE ENTREMÊLÉE DE LA SCIENCE ÉCONOMIQUE, DES MATHÉMATIQUES ET DES STATISTIQUES AUX ÉTATS-UNIS, 1900-1940 THÈSE PRÉSENTÉE COMME EXIGENCE PARTIELLE DU DOCTORAT EN ÉCONOMIQUE PAR CARVAJALINO FLOREZ JUAN GUILLERMO DÉCEMBRE 2016 UNIVERSITÉ DU QUÉBEC À MONTRÉAL EDWIN B. WILSON AT THE ORIGIN OF PAUL SAMUELSON'S MATHEMATICAL ECONOMICS: ESSAYS ON THE INTERWOVEN HISTORY OF ECONOMICS, MATHEMATICS AND STATISTICS IN THE U.S., 1900-1940 THESIS PRESENTED AS PARTIAL REQUIREMENT OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSPHY IN ECONOMIC BY CARVAJALINO FLOREZ JUAN GUILLERMO DECEMBER 2016 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS For the financial aid that made possible this project, I am thankful to the Université du Québec À Montréal (UQAM), the Fonds de Recherche du Québec Société et Culture (FRQSC), the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRCC) as well as the Centre Interuniversitaire de Recherche sur la Science et la Technologie (CIRST). I am also grateful to archivists for access to various collections and papers at the Harvard University Archives (Edwin Bidwell Wilson), David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University (Paul A. Samuelson and Lloyd Metzler), Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (John von Neumann and Oswald Veblen) and Yale University Library (James Tobin). I received encouraging and intellectual support from many. I particularly express my gratitude to the HOPE Center, at Duke University, where I spent the last semester of my Ph.D. and where the last chapter of this thesis was written. In particular, I thank Roy Weintraub for all his personal support, for significantly engaging with my work and for his valuable research advice. I also benefited from Kevin Hoover’s, Bruce Caldwell’s and Paul Dudenhefer’s kind and helpful comments. I thank Paul Samuelson Junior for kindly sharing with me his ideas about this project at an early stage. I am much obliged to Herrade Igersheim, Michel de Vreoy, Mauro Boianovsky, Erich Pinzon, Cléo Chassonnery-Zaïgouche and Simon Bilo, the visiting Fellows at the Hope Center when I was there, for the interesting discussions that we had and which, in a way or another, helped me. I am also indebted to Harro Maas, Béatrice Cherrier, Yann Giraud, Pascal Bridel, Annie Cot, John Singleton and Matt Panhans, who, with their interest for this project, gave me confidence. All my gratitude to Karen Parshall, Leo Corry, Ted Porter, Till Düppe, Pedro Duarte, Ivan Moscati and Nicolas Giocoli for having engaged with some of my work and for kindly providing constructive and enlightening ideas. In particular, I want to thank iv Roger Backhouse, who fully engaged with my work, provided more than valuable ideas, shared with me inestimable archival material and took my project seriously. At the department of economics at the UQAM, without mentioning Till Düppe and Robert Leonard, I am particularly grateful to Sean Horan, Wilfried Koch, Pierre-Carl Michaud and Théophile Bougna for their institutional and personal support. At the CIRST, I am thankful to François Claveau and Yves Gingras. I feel much lucky for having Robert Leonard as a Ph.D. advisor. He gave me the intellectual freedom that I needed, and, at the same time, from the distance, suggestively guided my thinking and practices as a historian of economics in significant ways. Above all, thanks to my family, all included, who unconditionally encouraged my doctoral project! DEDICATION A Decci, una mujer de fuego y de nieve, y a Blanca Sofía, que en paz descanse. TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS, ACRONYMES AND INITIALISMS ............................. VI RÉSUMÉ ........................................................................................................................... IX ABSTRACT ...................................................................................................................... XI INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................... 1 CHAPTER I EDWIN B. WILSON AND SCIENTIFIC RATIONALITY: CONNECTING AMERICAN SCIENCES, 1900-1945 ................................................................................ 9 1.1 Introduction .......................................................................................................... 9 1.2 A doubly difficult situation ................................................................................ 12 1.3 Defining scientific rationality ............................................................................ 14 1.3.1 A pedagogical question .......................................................................... 14 1.3.2 The role and the nature of hypothesis .................................................... 17 1.3.3 Epistemology and pedagogy .................................................................. 22 1.4 Gibbs, nationalism and pleas ............................................................................. 23 1.5 Rapprochement with American science ............................................................ 27 1.6 The statistical turn .............................................................................................. 30 1.7 Reforming American social science and economics ......................................... 35 1.8 The Stevenson Lectures in Citizenship .............................................................. 40 1.9 Conclusion ......................................................................................................... 43 1.10 References .......................................................................................................... 44 CHAPTER II EDWIN B. WILSON AND THE RISE OF MATHEMATICAL ECONOMICS IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, 1920-1940 ....................................................... 54 2.1 Introduction ........................................................................................................ 54 2.2 Incursion into social science and economics ..................................................... 57 2.3 Becoming a mathematical economist ................................................................ 60 2.3.1 Section K: the American origins of the Econometric Society ............... 60 vii 2.3.2 Increasing concerns about economic policy .......................................... 68 2.4 A program for mathematical economics at Harvard .......................................... 72 2.4.1 Harvard economics courses ................................................................... 77 2.4.2 Mathematical Economics ....................................................................... 78 2.4.3 Topics in Statistical Theory ................................................................... 84 2.5 Conclusion ......................................................................................................... 87 2.6 References .......................................................................................................... 88 CHAPTER III EDWIN B. WILSON, MORE THAN A CATALYTIC INFLUENCE FOR PAUL SAMUELSON’S FOUNDATIONS OF ECONOMIC ANALYSIS ................................ 94 3.2 Introduction ........................................................................................................ 94 3.3 The master and the disciple ............................................................................... 98 3.2.1 Edwin Bidwell Wilson ........................................................................... 98 3.2.2 Paul Samuelson .................................................................................... 100 3.3 The commitment: the thesis ............................................................................. 102 3.3.1 Introductory chapters ........................................................................... 107 3.3.2 The individual level ............................................................................. 114 3.3.3 The aggregate level .............................................................................. 127 3.4 Foundations: the finishing touches .................................................................. 133 3.5 Conclusion ....................................................................................................... 137 3.6 References ........................................................................................................ 139 CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................... 146 REFERENCES ................................................................................................................ 160 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS, ACRONYMES AND INITIALISMS AAAS American Association for the Advancement of Science AEA American Economic Association AMS American Mathematical Society ASA American Statistical Association HSPH Harvard School of Public Health HUA Harvard University Archives IMS Institute of Mathematical Statistics JTP James Tobin Papers LC Library of Congress LMP Lloyd Metzler Papers MIT Massachusetts Institute of Technology NACA National Advisory Committee for Aeronautic NAS National Academy of Science NASA National Aeronautics and Space Administration OVP Oswald Veblen Papers PASP Paul A. Samuelson Papers PEBW Papers of Edwin Bidwell Wilson PNAS Proceedings of the National Academy of Science SSRC Social Science Research Council TAMS Transactions of the American Mathematical Society UQAM Université du Québec à Montréal RÉSUMÉ Cette thèse
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