Vilfredo Pareto and interdisciplinary work

Long time ago, in the city of Florence surrounded by hills covered with countless vineyards of great importance, there lived Vilfredo Pareto, who studied mathematics and physics but worked as a civil engineer. And Vilfredo Pareto lived in Florence studying philosophy and politics and analyzed economic problems with mathematical tools. And he started teaching economics and one day he looked at wealth distribution and observed that twenty percent of the population owned eighty percent of the property in Italy.

It was indeed hard to believe, and he made a chart because he could make charts and he added bars and added lines to it until it was all done and looked most shocking. Inspired by all this, he made other charts and made other observations and created other mathematical models.

But as Vilfredo Pareto looked at his abstract mathematical economic models and looked at the society and could not understand why his beautiful abstract models did not work out in equally beautiful real world and he was bewildered and he pondered and he asked himself why. And from the land of Altogether Unmathematical Liberal Arts caught his attention one field called Sociology with a claim to help explain human society.

With a humble charm that it always had and it had then, Sociology helped Vilfredo Pareto see how some unexpected or uncontainable factors of human relationships in societies intervene with some of the describable and justifiable mathematical relationships that he wanted to understand and to model and to ponder and to help explain. So, he took his mathematical tools to the inquiries and examinations and investigations of Sociology.

And he became a truly multidisciplinary thinker and tinkerer, and as much as he loved science and mathematics and elegant mathematical models, he loved liberal arts and sociology and profound sociological observations.

So, my dear reader, as you next ponder how mathematical models and Pareto charts can help you make sense of a seemingly complex and complicated and overwhelming inventory system, be ready to bring in what you already know from the Arts, and if it is to your liking maybe even Sociology with all its humble charm that it always had and it always will have, and never forget that sometimes the Arts pave the way for the Sciences and other times the Sciences paves the way for the Arts, and cultivate a taste for them both, as they are inseparable and they are one and they together will help you go places…

PS: If this sounds oddly familiar, then you must have read “How the Rhinoceros Got His Skin” from Just So Stories by Rudyard Kipling. I found this story by the way of Ursula K. Le Guin as I followed a crumb she dropped in Steering the Craft. This is an attempt to make some topics that I teach tell their stories…