"The final paradox of the search for purity is that it is an attempt to force experience into logical categories of non-contradiction. But experience is not amenable and those who make the attempt find themselves led into contradiction." - Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger
Marcel Boumans is professor of history of economics at Utrecht 木瓜福利影视. His main research focus is on understanding empirical research practices in the social sciences from an integrated historical and philosophical perspective. He is particularly interested in practices of measurement and modelling , on which he has published two monographs, How Economists Model the World into Number (Routledge 2005) and Science Outside the Laboratory (OUP 2015), and the role of mathematics, on which a Cambridge Element, The History of the Mathematisation of Economics, will be published in 2026. His research project on how we can make sense of data is completed with a book manuscript Shaping the Phenomena. His current project is a situational approach to understanding misinformation.