I read with interest , which criticises the ostensible scientific nature of economics. My response was this:- <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Looking at economics from the point of view of someone trained in a hard science (Physics) and who still does some experimental work in a slightly softer one (Chemistry), I think calling economics a science is to denigrate science – unreasonably, in my eyes. I’m almost inclined to go as far as Dulce Martins (a commentator in the facebook thread following on the article) in comparing it with astrology (which, in the hands of “serious” practitioners involves a lot of mathematics and calculation). <\/p>\n\n\n\n
However,\n I don’t. There is some merit in simplifying problems to ones we can \nactually solve, as long as we keep in mind that our simple model is only\n going to have predictive value if the environment in which it operates \nis constrained hugely – and that doesn’t happen in economics, as far as I\n can see. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Some scientific fields have also managed \nto grapple with problems which are extremely complex, and economics, if \nit were to operate as a science, would have to acknowledge that the \nfield of economic interactions between humans is extremely complex, \nsomewhat more complex than sociology, which is ideally somewhat more \ncomplex than psychology, which is itself a field too complex for much in\n the way of mathematical treatment, at least so far. I am, of course, \nsuggesting that economics depends on sociology and so on through this \nprogression, which might ignore the existence of emergent phenomena \nwhich actually *are* simpler in form than the underlying fields, but I \nsee no good evidence that this applies in the case of economics, at \nleast so far.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One might suggest that economics could\n be regarded as, to some extent, an experimental science, in that we \nhave had experiments with Keynsianism (which, it seems to me, did quite \nwell for a while until mechanisms it didn’t provide for came into play) \nand with Freidmanism (which experiment, it seems to me, failed pretty \nmuch from the start, then failed disastrously, but is still being \ndoubled down on). I just note in that case that, if I am to be an \nexperimental subject for an economic experiment, I require to have given\n informed consent… \ud83d\ude09\n\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I read with interest , which criticises the ostensible scientific nature of economics. My response was this:- Looking at economics from the point of view of someone trained in a hard science (Physics) and who still does some experimental work in a slightly softer one (Chemistry), I think calling economics a science is to denigrate […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1564","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eyrelines.energion.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1564","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eyrelines.energion.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eyrelines.energion.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eyrelines.energion.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eyrelines.energion.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1564"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eyrelines.energion.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1564\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1565,"href":"https:\/\/eyrelines.energion.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1564\/revisions\/1565"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eyrelines.energion.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1564"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eyrelines.energion.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1564"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eyrelines.energion.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1564"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}