Arrow’s theorem shows that even very mild conditions of reasonableness in arriving at social decisions on the basis of simple preference rankings of a society’s individuals could not be simultaneously satisfied by any procedure. When the book based on his dissertation, Social Choice and Individual Values, was published in 1951, it became an instant classic.
阿罗的定理证明，对于以社会中个人的简单偏好排序为基础形成社会决策这一问题，即使是弱理性条件也无法通过任何程序（procedure）同时获得满足。以其博士论文为基础的《社会选择与个人价值》（Social Choice and Individual Values）出版于1951年，立刻就成为经典著作。