20 SOCIAL SCIENTIST background or interest in mathematical methods either force themselves to leam them, or they avoid them but still feel that the others—the mathematizers—are pursuing true science. In general, little history is studied. What role did mathematics play in the emergence and later development of neoclassical economic theory? Whence did the first neoclassical economists borrow their mathematical models? What are the effects of having chosen those mathematical analogies rather than others? Nor have these questions ever been proposed with respect to Marxian theory. Even if one is interested in these questions—again from my experience, the mathematically adept students uniformly were not, and fewer of the nonmathematizers than I would have thought were interested—there is little literature to form a basis for inquiry. The only debate of any significance among neoclassical economists concerning the role of mathematics in economics took place between 1948 and 1958. Economists will recognize that, not coincidentally, that decade was opened by the publication of Paul Samuelson's Foundations and closed by Gerard Debreu's Theory of Valued There was no official judge or jury, but the debate between opposing positions on the necessity of using mathematical models in economic theory was, de facto, won by the mathematizers. This is part of the external pressure alluded to above; it is in large part the reason why economists use the amount and type of mathematics that characterize their work today. And this is true not just of the neoclassicals, but also of institutional economists and, the subject of this essay, of many Marxists. Basically, the decision handed down by the tribunal at the end of the debate was that mathematics is the only true method of science—because it is logical, concise, precise, and mathematical models are capable of capturing the ~ essence of reality. At the same time, it was decided that mathematical statements should be translated into prose so that others, presumably less scientific (wasting their time engaged in, to use Samuelson's [1948, 6] words, 'the laborious literary working over of essentially simple mathematical concepts* that is 'not only unrewarding from the standpoint of advancing the science, but involves as well mental gymnastics of a peculiarly depraved type*), could understand them. From time to time, there have been a few admonishments from among economists themselves. Oskar Morgenstern (1963) and, more forcefully, Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen (1966,1971,W79) have indicated some of the limits imposed by the wholesale mathematization of neoclassical economics. However, even their limited criticisms have been ignored for the most part by the majority of neoclassical economists. There now seems to be somewhat more interest in the question of the role of mathematics in neoclassical economics, part of the revival of concern with questions of economic methodology. Claude Menard (1980), for example, has argued that the early neoclassical 'social physicists'