Oswald Spengler held that a civilization's mathematics, no less than its art, reveal its characteristic world view.¹ His distinction between Greek Classical civilization and the West occurred mostly in terms of their respective mathematics: the former, being static and spatial is epitomized by Pythagoras; and, lacking the concepts of limit and infinity, cannot embody the dynamism that is everywhere expressed in the art and science making-up our Faustian culture.

According to Spengler, the prime-symbols to be identified with a specifically Faustian state of soul found their purest expression in modern mathematics. These included the infinite continuum, the exponential logarithm with its dissociation from all connection with magnitude, transcendence beyond the possibility of visual definition; the Gothic form-feeling of pure, imperceptible, unlimited space, etc.

Hyperbolic production functions describe a space that is Gothic in this Spenglerian sense;² and they are inseparable from the SFEcon initiative because they are uniquely able to describe all aspects of economic optimality in mathematically closed-form. We have also submitted that hyperbolic utility parameters, when disclosed by neoclassical premises, provide quite serviceable empirical measures of the economic potential in our material surroundings.