Axioms and Babylonian Thought: A reply

Abstract

Paul Davidson has criticized Babylonian thought as supporting an "anything goes" approach to Post Keynesian economics. This note explains Babylonian thought, not as the dual of classical logic but as another form of logic that is rigorous in light of the nonergodic nature of social systems, and the uncertainty this entails. It is argued that Babylonian thought is one way of understanding Keynes's "ordinary logic," while Davidson's use of the term "axiomatic" appears problematic. But the ergodic axiom is so compatible with the open-systems ontology on which Babylonian thought is based that there is, in fact, scope for broad agreement.