Mathematical models and social sciences: myths and realities

Abstract

The use of mathematical models in the representation and understanding of social reality is a subject of controversy: some argue that the “quantification” of the social constitutes the solution to the methodological problems of the social sciences; others, on the contrary, argue that -as simplified representations of reality- these models are something else, not the reality they are intended to represent. On this basis, this paper questions the “myth of the objectivity” of mathematical models, given that their construction processes entail an unavoidable degree of subjectivity. However, at the same time, their use in social sciences is revived, as long as they are not intended to achieve a faithful (“objective”) representation of reality. This paper is based on the analysis of two reports produced in the 1970s that used mathematical models and polarized the debate on development on a global scale: The Limits to Growth (Meadows et al., 1972), a report fron the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Catastrophe or New Society? The Latin American World Model (Herrera et al., 1977), prepared in response to the former by the Bariloche Foundation in Argentina.