How Language Informs Mathematics: Bridging Hegelian Dialectics and Marxian Models

In How Language Informs Mathematics Dirk Damsma shows how Hegel’s and Marx’s systematic dialectical analysis of mathematical and economic language helps us understand the structure and nature of mathematical and capitalist systems. More importantly, Damsma shows how knowledge of the latter can inform model assumptions and help improve models.

His book provides a blueprint for an approach to economic model building that does away with arbitrarily chosen assumptions and is sensitive to the institutional structures of capitalism. In light of the failure of mainstream economics to understand systemic failures like the financial crisis and given the arbitrary character of most assumptions in mainstream models, such an approach is desperately needed.

Dirk Damsma, Ph.D. (2015), University of Amsterdam, is Lecturer of Economic Methodology and Thesis Coordinator at that university. He has published ‘Set Theory and Geometry in Hegel’ in Hegel Jahrbuch 2011. This book is an improved rendition of his dissertation.