Environmental Context Limits to Growth

Significant Writings


Computer Simulations
Mathematical model
Exponential growth
Positive feedback loops
Findings
Conclusions

Reactions and Responses
Case Study: Population
References
Site Map

Back to Main Menu...

Limits to Growth

Formally Stated Mathematical Model

In Favour
Against

Book Cover

In favour of a mathematical model:

The MIT team claimed that a formally stated mathematical model was better than mental models because the interactions were specified and assumptions made explicit.

"Ours is a formal, written model of the world. It constitutes a preliminary attempt to improve our mental models of long-term, global problems by combining the large amount of information that is already in human minds and in written records with the new information-processing tools that mankind's increasing knowledge has produced--the scientific method, systems analysis, and the modern computer."


ref: Donella Meadows et al, The Limits to Growth, Pan Books, 1972.

Back to top...

Against a mathematical model:

Christopher Freeman argued the use of a mathematical computer model encouraged delusion in five ways:

  1. giving the spurious appearance of precise knowledge of quantities and relationships which are unknown and in many cases unknowable.
  2. encouraging the neglect of factors which are difficult to quantify such as policy changes or value changes.
  3. stimulating gross over-simplification, because of the problem of aggregation and the comparative simplicity of our computers and mathematic techniques.
  4. encouraging the tendency to treat some features of the model as rigid and immutable.
  5. making it extremely difficult for the non-numerate or those who do not have access to computers to rebut what are essentially tendentious and rather naive political assumptions.


ref: Christopher Freeman, 'Malthus with a Computer' in Thinking About the Future ed. by HSD Cole et al, Chatto & Windus, 1973, p12.

Back to top...