“It is clear that the building of models is not a purely mechanical process but requires skill of a high order – not merely mathematical skill but a sensitivity to the relative importance of different factors and a critical, almost an artistic, faculty in the selection of behaviour equations which are reasonable, tentative hypotheses in explaining the behaviour of actual economies.”

—  Kenneth E. Boulding

Source: 1950s, The Skills of the Economist, 1958, p. 16-17 as cited in Andrew Mearman (2011).

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Kenneth E. Boulding163
British-American economist 1910–1993

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