Modern microeconomic theory is based on a foundation of ordinal preference relations. Good textbooks stress that cardinal utility functions are artificial constructions of convenience, and that economics does not attribute any meaning to “utils.” However, we argue that despite this official position, in practice mainstream economists rely on techniques that assume the validity of cardinal utility. Doing so has turned mainstream economic theorizing into an exercise of reductionism of objects down to the preferences of ‘ideal type’ subjects.

Even the briefest and most superficial perusal of leading mainstream economics journals will attest to the degree that mathematical formalism has captured the economics profession. Whereas up to the early 20th century virtually all of the output of the dismal scientists was in the literary format, by the early 21st century this is not at all any longer the case. Mathematical formalism is supposed to serve economics, and yet now true economic insight has been crowded out by the math. If mainstream neoclassical economics is to come back to its proper path, a far less central role for mathematical economics, statistics and econometrics will have to be fashioned.