Maurice Allais

Too many theorists have a tendency to ignore facts that contradict their convictions.

Maurice Félix Charles Allais (31 May 1911 – 9 October 2010) was a French physicist and economist, and the 1988 laureate of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics "for his pioneering contributions to the theory of markets and efficient utilization of resources". Besides his career in economics, Maurice Allais performed experiments between 1952 and 1960 in the field of gravitation, special relativity and electromagnetism, and discovered the Allais effect.

Quotes

A theory is only as good as its assumptions. If the premises are false, the theory has no real scientific value. The only scientific criterion for judging the validity of a scientific theory is a confrontation with the data of experience.

• La soumission aux données de l'expérience est la règle d'or qui domine toute discipline scientifique.
  • Submission to the experimental data is the golden rule that dominates any scientific discipline.
    • Speech on being awarded the Academician sword, address to the Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques (19 October 1993)

• Any author who uses mathematics should always express in ordinary language the meaning of the assumptions he admits, as well as the significance of the results obtained. The more abstract his theory, the more imperative this obligation.
  In fact, mathematics are and can only be a tool to explore reality. In this exploration, mathematics do not constitute an end in itself, they are and can only be a means.
  • La formation scientifique, Une communication du Prix Nobel d’économie, Maurice Allais, address to the Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques (1997)

• Anyone who dares to speak about an aether is regarded as an ignorant and backward mind and he can only lose his credibility in scientific circles, although in reality those who criticize him use the same concept of intermediate medium in other words, whether it be fields, an associated fluid, a probability fluid, a pilot fluid, a quantum fluid, etc.
  • L'anisotropie de l'espace. La nécessaire révision de certains postulats des théories contemporaines. Les données de l'expérience (1997), p. 506 ISBN 2-908735-09-1

• A theory is only as good as its assumptions. If the premises are false, the theory has no real scientific value. The only scientific criterion for judging the validity of a scientific theory is a confrontation with the data of experience.
  • L'anisotropie de l'espace. La nécessaire révision de certains postulats des théories contemporaines. Les données de l'expérience (1997), p. 591

• Too many theorists have a tendency to ignore facts that contradict their convictions.
  • L'anisotropie de l'espace. La nécessaire révision de certains postulats des théories contemporaines. Les données de l'expérience (1997), p. 640

• In fact, without any exaggeration, the current mechanism of money creation through credit is certainly the "cancer" that's irretrievably eroding market economies of private property.
  • La Crise mondiale d’aujourd’hui. Pour de profondes réformes des institutions financières et monétaires (1999), p. 74 ISBN 2-908735-11-3

External links

• Maurice Allais – Allais' website
• Maurice Allais – Autobiographical notes at Nobel Prize nobel.se
• "The 1988 Nobel Prize in Economics" by Eugene G. Garfield
• Ideological profile at Econ Journal Watch
• Allais's entry on the History of economic thought website
• Profile in The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics 2nd edition (2010) Library of Economics and Liberty
• Biographical profile at the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences
• Allais' CV, 1987
• IDEAS/RePEc