Rich complexity, even within corporate culture
An article scrutinises the relationships between history and economy, addressing old and new research methods
History understood as human life repeating, while also renewing, itself. History teaching us how to better look at the present and pay more attention to the future, and thus address all the issues that need to be addressed. A complex history, then, to be explored and enjoyed nonetheless, even when classic research methods are in need of more recent (and perhaps innovative) approaches – something that also applies to business and economy.
Giovanni Gozzini and Francesco Maccelli investigate these topics in their “Storia contemporanea, storia economica ed economia: un dialogo tra sordi?” (“Contemporary history, economic history and economy. Words falling on deaf ears?”), an article that was recently published in the journal Passato e presente (Past and present).
The two authors start from a remark: mathematical methods, and especially econometrics ones, are being increasingly used to analyse history, and this might lead, at times, to some unwarranted conclusions. Indeed, the article explains how easy it is to apply excessive objectiveness and mathematical reasoning, and ignore the human dimension that every historical event entails, which also affects the research of scholars whose own approach is technically quite different from the ordinary methods applied to the study of history (and, often, of economics, too). A focus on computation rather than human nature, and the inspiration for the thought-provoking title chosen by Gozzini and Maccelli for their contribution: “Words falling on deaf ears?”. This seems to be the case, especially when, as the two authors note, “historian-mathematicians” create their own research and information exchange environments, from which the “other historians”, as well as other economics and social scholars, are excluded.
According to the two researchers, this causes the risk to reduce history and the interpretation of reality to a mechanical representation that is far from the complex nature of reality but, they further explain, those who study the past and the present should make an effort, instead, to reconcile different approaches, making the most of new research methods that do not preclude those aspects of human activity that cannot be reduced to mathematical formulae. Indeed, we need to understand the complexity of history, rather than simplify it – a good practice that also applies to a corporate culture that wants to keep on growing and enriching itself.
Storia contemporanea, storia economica ed economia: un dialogo tra sordi? (“Contemporary history, economic history and economy. Words falling on deaf ears”)
Giovanni Gozzini, Francesco Maccelli
PASSATO E PRESENTE, 117/2022
An article scrutinises the relationships between history and economy, addressing old and new research methods
History understood as human life repeating, while also renewing, itself. History teaching us how to better look at the present and pay more attention to the future, and thus address all the issues that need to be addressed. A complex history, then, to be explored and enjoyed nonetheless, even when classic research methods are in need of more recent (and perhaps innovative) approaches – something that also applies to business and economy.
Giovanni Gozzini and Francesco Maccelli investigate these topics in their “Storia contemporanea, storia economica ed economia: un dialogo tra sordi?” (“Contemporary history, economic history and economy. Words falling on deaf ears?”), an article that was recently published in the journal Passato e presente (Past and present).
The two authors start from a remark: mathematical methods, and especially econometrics ones, are being increasingly used to analyse history, and this might lead, at times, to some unwarranted conclusions. Indeed, the article explains how easy it is to apply excessive objectiveness and mathematical reasoning, and ignore the human dimension that every historical event entails, which also affects the research of scholars whose own approach is technically quite different from the ordinary methods applied to the study of history (and, often, of economics, too). A focus on computation rather than human nature, and the inspiration for the thought-provoking title chosen by Gozzini and Maccelli for their contribution: “Words falling on deaf ears?”. This seems to be the case, especially when, as the two authors note, “historian-mathematicians” create their own research and information exchange environments, from which the “other historians”, as well as other economics and social scholars, are excluded.
According to the two researchers, this causes the risk to reduce history and the interpretation of reality to a mechanical representation that is far from the complex nature of reality but, they further explain, those who study the past and the present should make an effort, instead, to reconcile different approaches, making the most of new research methods that do not preclude those aspects of human activity that cannot be reduced to mathematical formulae. Indeed, we need to understand the complexity of history, rather than simplify it – a good practice that also applies to a corporate culture that wants to keep on growing and enriching itself.
Storia contemporanea, storia economica ed economia: un dialogo tra sordi? (“Contemporary history, economic history and economy. Words falling on deaf ears”)
Giovanni Gozzini, Francesco Maccelli
PASSATO E PRESENTE, 117/2022