Robert Solow
American economist (1924–2023)
The numbers
2 + 9 = 11
1 + 1 = 2
Lo Shu grid
Missing: 5, 6, 7. Present digits repeat to show how many times they occur.
Life path 2 (master 11) — The Illuminator
Eleven is a master number in Western practice: reduced it is 2, but the tradition holds it unreduced because a doubled 1 is read as intensified rather than merely summed. It is associated with sudden insight, unusual perception, and a nervous system that runs hot. The reading is consistent that master numbers are a burden before they are a gift — the perception arrives whether or not there is anywhere to put it.
Complete lines
Line of Expression
A complete line in the grid.
Cooperation
A complete line in the grid.
Organisation
A complete line in the grid.
Repeated numbers
2 appears 4 times
Concentrated sensitivity. Read as perception so continuous it becomes hard to switch off.
What is missing
Missing 5
The centre of the grid, so its absence is weighted heavily. Read as difficulty adapting mid-course — a preference for the plan already chosen over the plan now indicated.
Missing 6
Read as a complicated relationship with obligation — either avoiding it or over-shouldering it, rarely a settled middle.
Missing 7
Read as reluctance to sit with an unresolved question. Associated with wanting the working answer rather than the true one.
Vedic — Ank Jyotish
Moolank 5 comes from the day of the month alone; Bhagyank 2 from the whole date. They differ, which is the ordinary case — the two numbers answer different questions.
Budha
Mercury. Intellect, commerce, speech. Read as quickness and adaptability.
Bhagyank uses the same arithmetic as the Western life path, so the two will always agree. That is not two traditions confirming each other — it is one calculation under two names.
In their words
Everything reminds Milton of the money supply. Well, everything reminds me of sex, but I keep it out of the paper.
You can see the computer age everywhere but in the productivity statistics.
Suppose someone sits down where you are sitting right now and announces to me that he is Napoleon Bonaparte. The last thing I want to do with him is to get involved in a technical discussion of cavalry tactics at the Battle of Austerlitz. If I do that, I'm getting tacitly drawn into the game that he is Napoleon Bonaparte. Now, Bob Lucas and Tom Sargent like nothing better than to get drawn into technical discussions, because then you have tacitly gone along with their fundamental assumptions; your attention is attracted away from the basic weakness of the whole story. Since I find that fundamental framework ludicrous, I respond by treating it as ludicrous – that is, by laughing at it – so as not to fall into the trap of taking it seriously and passing on to matters of technique.
Well, I certainly was not going to study physics, and I knew I was not going to study biology, but I could have become a sociologist or an anthropologist. However, I found sociology a little soft. I think that somewhere in my mind, I probably already had the notion – which turned out to be right – that if I was going to be a social scientist of some kind, I would like a rigorous social science. The analytical aspect of economics already appealed to me. That must have been so. It was not really a matter of chance. But if my wife had said 'oh, no, economics was terribly boring', I would probably have found something else to do.
More generally, Schumpeter seemed to be playing the role of grand seigneur, and he tended to flatter where flattery was not due, no doubt satirically. All this went along with his reputation as a casual and easy grader. We used to say that he threw the exam books up a staircase: the ones that stuck at the top got an A, the ones that fell to the bottom an A minus. I was surprised to learn that in Austrian universities he had the reputation of a stern taskmaster.
In recollecting Schumpeter, it is hard to tear oneself away from the exotic manner, the dubious politics, the carefully crafted image, the hidden self-doubts, the convoluted life story, the complicated relations to three wives and several non-wives.
Sourced from Wikiquote, restricted to the subject’s own sourced sections.