6 ms·

Is economics a science?

25 points by zootar 13y ago

yetanotherphd 13y ago
I love to hear Schiller speak, even though I don't subscribe to his particular behaviorist ideas (they are quite outside the mainstream of academic research). He is very measured in his criticism of the mainstream, and his article is a very fair summary (in my opinion) of how scientific mainstream economics is. Schiller is a moderate dissenter in that he thinks the current ration-agent-model approach is flawed, bout doesn't advocate abandoning mathematical models. Like Schiller, I believe that it is possible to test and validate theories, but at the same time we cannot have the same certainty as in physics, and the "irreducibly human element" will also prevent the same deep mathematical theories that we see in physics, ever being developed for economics.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
saosebastiao 13y ago
Of course it is a science, but most critics of it should remember that it is a social science, and comes with all of the difficulty of proof that all social sciences suffer from. There are some common principles of the field that have strong theoretical and empirical foundations, and the rest of them are trying to make do with the constraints forced upon them by virtue of working with humans. The principle of Supply and Demand is one that has so much historical empirical evidence that it might as well be called a physical law...but we can't call it that because the principle relies on human cognition, culture, and other non-deterministic influences. Trade theory also has an extremely strong empirical evidence. A lot of microeconomics is also very emprical, and even has a lot of experimental control mechanisms for which macroeconomics does not. Still, we can accept these ideas as true beyond any reasonable doubt. However, we have an extremely long way to go before the rest of the field catches up to the same standards.
- rz2k 13y ago
  Assertions that 'economics is not a science' are almost certain to be followed by some confident conclusion specifically related to economics that sounds like common sense, but contradicts anything that makes sense after applying any rigor.
- bayesianhorse 13y ago
  Which "law" of supply and demand are you thinking of? To my knowledge, there is no single such law, just a general rule of thumb. Simple mathmatical models in economy, in which "laws" can be proven often don't predict the real markets all that well.
  - MisterMerkin 13y ago
    The only law in economics is Say's law. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Say%27s_law http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Say%27s_law
    - notahacker 13y ago
      Say's Law certainly isn't the only economic proposition claimed to be a "law", though it is arguably the most misunderstood and most widely regarded as false of all the "laws"...
  - saosebastiao 13y ago
    I explicitly did not call it a law, and even explained why it cannot be called such, so I have no clue why you are calling me out on that. Regardless, I take exception to the claim that they "often don't predict the real markets all that well". They can predict real markets very well in most scenarios. Most theoretical-basis predictions of price ceilings and floors (such as rent control or minimum wages) are perfectly sound, but there is plenty of ambiguity in the results that critics seem to misinterpret as proof of the failure of Supply and Demand to predict outcomes. Price ceilings tend to result in shortages, but occasionally result in no effect at all. But that isn't enough evidence to say that Supply and Demand doesn't apply to this scenario. In order to disprove the applicability of Supply and Demand, you would have to show that a price ceiling increased the quantity supplied. Such scenarios are as rare as black swans.
brianbreslin 13y ago
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudoscience#Psychology http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudoscience#Psychology is psychology a real science?
- dmpk2k 13y ago
  What does that link have to do with your question? To answer your question: some subdisciplines of psychology are (e.g. biological psychology), and some are not (e.g. psychoanalysis). From what I've seen, all world-class universities emphasize the former; the latter is only taught in passing in psych 101 as history. I've yet to see anybody seriously discuss psychoanalysis nowadays outside of... well, to be honest, women's studies. Of course, that field never claimed to be a science. Oh, Žižek does too.
grogenaut 13y ago
No. Social sciences aren't sciences. They're "Social" sciences. That doesn't keep it from straying into the real sciences, just like computer science sometimes strays into real science.
- j2kun 13y ago
  Are you saying that computer science isn't a science?
troymc 13y ago
I once thought that large-scale macro-economics was derived from empirical behavioral economics and microeconomics, similar to the way thermodynamics is derived from basic laws of physics (via the methods of statistical mechanics). That's not what was done, but maybe someday... Also, imagine a world where macroeconomic models get thrown out, or at least modified, when their predictions fail. Wouldn't that be neat?
jokoon 13y ago
You can hardly innovate in economics if politics don't follow. Economical decisions are so much entangled and tainted with politics, that's a big reason why it's not really scientific. The theory is sound, but practice is awful for many reasons, mostly political and because of the human factor. Capitalism is a decent and somewhat balanced practice of economics, but the fact that it's not a hard science shows that there is a disconnect between theory and practice.
raverbashing 13y ago
Questions like "is X a science" looks often like the "True Scotsman" fallacy Or better, if you want to keep strict, to things that can have an experiment "perfectly reproduced" infinite times, then you have physics and chemistry for that. Biology? No. A simple example, the LD for a substance. At LD50 you have 50% of samples dying. Here you have a substance with a very strong effect (death), at a high dose (because it kills 50%) and still, the chance of it effecting the sample is 50% (ok, 50% by design of experiment, and you'll have an spectrum of reactions)? An electron suffers a force inside an electrical field, 100% (exactly) of the time. Some things have some probabilities, like nuclear decay, where it decays to substance 1 A1% of the time and to substance 2 A2% of the time, but that's it, no in-betweens.
- lutusp 13y ago
  > Questions like "is X a science" looks often like the "True Scotsman" fallacy True about Scotsmen, false about science. Science is easy to define, therefore easy to detect. Either a field has testable, falsifiable ideas -- ideas that can be compared to reality in practical tests, indeed are compared to reality, and are promptly discarded if they fail the test -- or they do not. End of story, fini, full stop. > Biology? No. Biology, yes. Either DNA is the source of heredity or it isn't. It's testable and falsifiable. Either natural selection produces new species or it doesn't. Again, testable and falsifiable. Biology can make and test empirical claims, and it does, and it discards those ideas that fail the test. That's science. Look at prions. At first no one knew what was going on, so they did some research. They took body fluid from one victim and passed it through a filter that would have stopped a virus, but the prions got through. This forced the explanation that something smaller than a virus was reproducing and causing fatal illnesses. This led to a much better assessment of what prions are. A falsifiable test was performed, the test succeeded, prions are real. Mad cow disease, Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease and a handful of other diseases would have remained unexplained, except for the science. > An electron suffers a force inside an electrical field, 100% (exactly) of the time. It's easy to describe physics as a science, for the reason that it is very much a science. What's hard is comparing physics to other endeavors that might or might not be sciences. But there's no reason to use physics as a science yardstick -- all one needs to do is ask, "what theories have you tested, falsified, and discarded?" http://xkcd.com/435/ http://xkcd.com/435/
downer99 13y ago
It's Science as much as any social science is Science. The only reason we can't transform social sciences into hard sciences is because it would be horrifically cruel and unethical to exert rigid, inflexible rules on thinking, breathing, feeling human beings. You can't turn human beings into raw predictable numbers without killing them, or throwing them in jail (however intangible such a prison might be, loss of choice and free will is enslavement).
acd 13y ago
It is a social science with assumptions on how things works. A lot of economic theories are just that assumptions, assumptions on how the market works. If you have the time watch Professor Steve Keens one of the economists who predicted the 2008 subprime bubble criticize main stream economics. Especially the Federal reserve system which is privately owned by the biggest banks. Read on Edward Griffins google the creature from Jekyll island. In that information you will find that the FED was created by a among others senator Aldrich who's daughter was married to one of the banks who created the FED. Thus private banks create debt out of thin air more now so than ever they are backed up by central banks. In the European central bank, the head of the bank comes from Goldman Sachs. There is a documentary called 97% owned which states 97% of all money in circulation are now debt just 3% is cash. Ever wonder how the rich gets richer?
atmosx 13y ago
You can't apply the scientific method and when coming back in the real world leaving models and presumptions aside you see that economists never play an important role. They easily justify their failures no matter how big. You can't even trust history books to tell you if the X policy was a success or failure. In order to understand economics in my view, you have to know how politics work. Politicians and nations or people in power at any given time can turn a debt to 0 or to a war. Of course in a democracy it's more complicated, but generally that's the main idea. The their puppets try to justify the move. It is what is happening in Greece, in the USA, in Italy and in other parts of world. Rationality and math has little to do with economics. So since economists never predict anything really (when they do they get a Nobel), I hardly see this as a science. As for the argument that physics or biology is not a science, I can know this: the same experiment can done time and again giving the same result. Try it in real-life economics...
- yetanotherphd 13y ago
  Lacking predictive power is indeed a big issue of economics. However you are completely wrong about sovereign debt. It is a minor issue, and defaults almost never result in wars. Argentina defaulted or restructured its debt 4 times since 1980.
forgottenpaswrd 13y ago
No, it is not. Nor it should be. Economist call their discipline "social science" basically because they suffer from "science envy". They want to believe that there are simple things like "water molecule is the bonding of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen". But in economy they are not, as economy is about the most flexible thing on Earth, humans and the relationship between them. Economy is about dogma, there are Keynesians dogma followers(that look like never read a book of Keynes), Austrian dogma followers, and so on. Nothing to do with science but with power grabbing. Today all institutions are dominated by keynesians ands as everybody can see they are making the world a worse place.
lutusp 13y ago
I'm astonished that these questions get asked again and again, about fields that are obviously not sciences. Fields that can and do test their theories against reality in practical, empirical tests, that discard falsified theories, and that have a corpus of supporting evidence that forces all similarly equipped observers to the same conclusion, are sciences. The rest are pseudosciences whose status is clearly shown by innumerable articles whose titles end in a question mark. http://xkcd.com/435/ http://xkcd.com/435/
- eru 13y ago
  Microeconomics is a science by that definition. Mathematics is not (or not really).
  - mike_esspe 13y ago
    Mathematical proofs are falsifiable, and there are a lot of hypotheses, that are not proved yet: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unsolved_problems_in_mathematics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unsolved_problems_in_m...
    - lutusp 13y ago
      > Mathematical proofs are falsifiable No, they aren't. A mathematical proof is by definition unfalsifiable. If an error is found in a proof (as with Wiles' proof of Fermat's Last Theorem), that it isn't a proof ... yet. And mathematical proofs aren't empirical, another requirement for science. Scientific theories are falsifiable in perpetuity because the possibility always exists for new empirical evidence to show up that falsifies an existing theory. This possibility doesn't exist for mathematical proofs.
  - mpweiher 13y ago
    I don't think mathematics was ever considered a science. See the definition of the 'liberal arts', which includes science and math as separate entities: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_arts_education http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_arts_education
- 13y ago
_Simon 13y ago
Yet more intelligentsia bullshit from the Guardian. No. Economics is categorically not a science. It's not even a social science. It is, at best, one of the humanities.
tomcdonnell 13y ago
I consider economics to be more like a branch of philosophy than a science. The way to judge a good economic theory from bad one is to evaluate the soundness of its arguments. Historical data can never confirm or refute an economic theory because people have free will, and can act any way they choose.
yason 13y ago
Why does it matter, why is that question such a hot potato?
- bjourne 13y ago
  Take all the fast food workers that strikes to raise their minimum wage from ~$7 to $15/hour because they need to work more than 8h or are dependent on food stamps. Many (most?) economists think that that will have disastrous consequences for the US economy. Iff economy is a science, then their view should be taken into account because it is based on solid scientifically-backed evidence. Exactly like how you would take the view of climate scientists very seriously if you knew climate science was a real science. But if economy is not a science, that means there is no evidence either or. Then you have no one else results to rely on and have to use your own common sense to analyze questions like the above one.
  - yason 13y ago
    And does that matter? Most things are like that. The miniscule subset of all things in the universe that we do know scientifically doesn't mean that the things outside that subset don't provide any value. If an economic theory is useful even if it doesn't have a proof like in hard sciences it provides value nevertheless. There are scientifically proven things that are undisputable but which, on the other hand, aren't much of a value either now but maybe of great value later, at some point in the future. But merely having scientific evidence is not an implication of value. If something seems to work, it seems to work. If that something also gets scientifically verified at some point it might turn out to have additional value, too. But it still works if it happened to worked before that. Of all the information verified in hard sciences only a part is practically valuable in running societies, governments, states, and efforts involving humans. The minimum wage of fast food workers is a problem that has no scientific answer and which is also probably quite hard to approach scientifically in the first place. I suppose that the majority of question in a human society are like that. An inflated appreciation towards scientifically verified information tends to overlook everything else that isn't scientifically verified. Yet all those things lacking scientific verification are things among which new theories are discovered and some of those do eventually become proven and verified. Yet ultimately, there are no truths, just opinions. Some opinions are individual opinions and may not be shared by many. Some opinions are reasonably based on evidence from various scientific experiments and some of that evidence is so solid that it would be hard to convince most of individuals in our culture otherwise. The physical theories involving air travel are accepted and tested by millions of people every day: they're effectively betting their lives against the theories explaining flight being correct. So the opinions are shared by many if not most people and they practically become something we consider a truth. Yet what happens is not that it becomes more true or a more absolute truth: what happens is that you convince more people —— and often for a good reason, but objectively that's what can be seen happening. In the end, all we have is our mind and the way we make it up.
alan_cx 13y ago
Surely the question should be, "Can you apply the scientific method to economics?".
- berntb 13y ago
  There are lots of non-experimental subjects at any university -- history, archeology, etc. The ideologists wanting to demote economics never seem to want to also throw geology out of the university. (In the future, some gigantic geo engineering might make geology experimental, the same goes for "perfect" computer models of society and economic experiments. Don't hold your breath, unless we argue inside such a model now; wonder what the hypothesis is? :-) )
  - marcosdumay 13y ago
    Eh, sorry, but geology is full of theories that were (and are) later tested, most getting discarded after the testing, and a few holding up and being accepted as true. Just like any science out there. Do you know of any macroeconomical (because, really, that's all about macro) theory that was discarded since Keynes become mainstream?
    - berntb 13y ago
      The "scientific method" -- which I commented on -- needs to formulate hypotheses, test them and so on. That can't reliably be done in any mostly historical science, by definition. (And of course you can randomly test some things in historical sciences too. E.g. finding historical trading patterns by looking at materials used for artefacts, diet by looking at enamel of skeletons, etc etc. Other things won't find any possible test solution, ever.)
jahaja 13y ago
It was much clearer when it was more appropriately called "Political Economy". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_economy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_economy

25 points by zootar 13y ago

I love to hear Schiller speak, even though I don't subscribe to his particular behaviorist ideas (they are quite outside the mainstream of academic research). He is very measured in his criticism of the mainstream, and his article is a very fair summary (in my opinion) of how scientific mainstream economics is. Schiller is a moderate dissenter in that he thinks the current ration-agent-model approach is flawed, bout doesn't advocate abandoning mathematical models. Like Schiller, I believe that it is possible to test and validate theories, but at the same time we cannot have the same certainty as in physics, and the "irreducibly human element" will also prevent the same deep mathematical theories that we see in physics, ever being developed for economics.

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]

saosebastiao 13y ago

Of course it is a science, but most critics of it should remember that it is a social science, and comes with all of the difficulty of proof that all social sciences suffer from. There are some common principles of the field that have strong theoretical and empirical foundations, and the rest of them are trying to make do with the constraints forced upon them by virtue of working with humans. The principle of Supply and Demand is one that has so much historical empirical evidence that it might as well be called a physical law...but we can't call it that because the principle relies on human cognition, culture, and other non-deterministic influences. Trade theory also has an extremely strong empirical evidence. A lot of microeconomics is also very emprical, and even has a lot of experimental control mechanisms for which macroeconomics does not. Still, we can accept these ideas as true beyond any reasonable doubt. However, we have an extremely long way to go before the rest of the field catches up to the same standards.

rz2k 13y ago
Assertions that 'economics is not a science' are almost certain to be followed by some confident conclusion specifically related to economics that sounds like common sense, but contradicts anything that makes sense after applying any rigor.
bayesianhorse 13y ago
Which "law" of supply and demand are you thinking of? To my knowledge, there is no single such law, just a general rule of thumb. Simple mathmatical models in economy, in which "laws" can be proven often don't predict the real markets all that well.
- MisterMerkin 13y ago
  The only law in economics is Say's law. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Say%27s_law http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Say%27s_law
  - notahacker 13y ago
    Say's Law certainly isn't the only economic proposition claimed to be a "law", though it is arguably the most misunderstood and most widely regarded as false of all the "laws"...
- saosebastiao 13y ago
  I explicitly did not call it a law, and even explained why it cannot be called such, so I have no clue why you are calling me out on that. Regardless, I take exception to the claim that they "often don't predict the real markets all that well". They can predict real markets very well in most scenarios. Most theoretical-basis predictions of price ceilings and floors (such as rent control or minimum wages) are perfectly sound, but there is plenty of ambiguity in the results that critics seem to misinterpret as proof of the failure of Supply and Demand to predict outcomes. Price ceilings tend to result in shortages, but occasionally result in no effect at all. But that isn't enough evidence to say that Supply and Demand doesn't apply to this scenario. In order to disprove the applicability of Supply and Demand, you would have to show that a price ceiling increased the quantity supplied. Such scenarios are as rare as black swans.

brianbreslin 13y ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudoscience#Psychology http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudoscience#Psychology is psychology a real science?

dmpk2k 13y ago
What does that link have to do with your question? To answer your question: some subdisciplines of psychology are (e.g. biological psychology), and some are not (e.g. psychoanalysis). From what I've seen, all world-class universities emphasize the former; the latter is only taught in passing in psych 101 as history. I've yet to see anybody seriously discuss psychoanalysis nowadays outside of... well, to be honest, women's studies. Of course, that field never claimed to be a science. Oh, Žižek does too.

grogenaut 13y ago

No. Social sciences aren't sciences. They're "Social" sciences. That doesn't keep it from straying into the real sciences, just like computer science sometimes strays into real science.

j2kun 13y ago
Are you saying that computer science isn't a science?

troymc 13y ago

I once thought that large-scale macro-economics was derived from empirical behavioral economics and microeconomics, similar to the way thermodynamics is derived from basic laws of physics (via the methods of statistical mechanics). That's not what was done, but maybe someday... Also, imagine a world where macroeconomic models get thrown out, or at least modified, when their predictions fail. Wouldn't that be neat?

jokoon 13y ago

You can hardly innovate in economics if politics don't follow. Economical decisions are so much entangled and tainted with politics, that's a big reason why it's not really scientific. The theory is sound, but practice is awful for many reasons, mostly political and because of the human factor. Capitalism is a decent and somewhat balanced practice of economics, but the fact that it's not a hard science shows that there is a disconnect between theory and practice.

raverbashing 13y ago

Questions like "is X a science" looks often like the "True Scotsman" fallacy Or better, if you want to keep strict, to things that can have an experiment "perfectly reproduced" infinite times, then you have physics and chemistry for that. Biology? No. A simple example, the LD for a substance. At LD50 you have 50% of samples dying. Here you have a substance with a very strong effect (death), at a high dose (because it kills 50%) and still, the chance of it effecting the sample is 50% (ok, 50% by design of experiment, and you'll have an spectrum of reactions)? An electron suffers a force inside an electrical field, 100% (exactly) of the time. Some things have some probabilities, like nuclear decay, where it decays to substance 1 A1% of the time and to substance 2 A2% of the time, but that's it, no in-betweens.

lutusp 13y ago
> Questions like "is X a science" looks often like the "True Scotsman" fallacy True about Scotsmen, false about science. Science is easy to define, therefore easy to detect. Either a field has testable, falsifiable ideas -- ideas that can be compared to reality in practical tests, indeed are compared to reality, and are promptly discarded if they fail the test -- or they do not. End of story, fini, full stop. > Biology? No. Biology, yes. Either DNA is the source of heredity or it isn't. It's testable and falsifiable. Either natural selection produces new species or it doesn't. Again, testable and falsifiable. Biology can make and test empirical claims, and it does, and it discards those ideas that fail the test. That's science. Look at prions. At first no one knew what was going on, so they did some research. They took body fluid from one victim and passed it through a filter that would have stopped a virus, but the prions got through. This forced the explanation that something smaller than a virus was reproducing and causing fatal illnesses. This led to a much better assessment of what prions are. A falsifiable test was performed, the test succeeded, prions are real. Mad cow disease, Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease and a handful of other diseases would have remained unexplained, except for the science. > An electron suffers a force inside an electrical field, 100% (exactly) of the time. It's easy to describe physics as a science, for the reason that it is very much a science. What's hard is comparing physics to other endeavors that might or might not be sciences. But there's no reason to use physics as a science yardstick -- all one needs to do is ask, "what theories have you tested, falsified, and discarded?" http://xkcd.com/435/ http://xkcd.com/435/

downer99 13y ago

It's Science as much as any social science is Science. The only reason we can't transform social sciences into hard sciences is because it would be horrifically cruel and unethical to exert rigid, inflexible rules on thinking, breathing, feeling human beings. You can't turn human beings into raw predictable numbers without killing them, or throwing them in jail (however intangible such a prison might be, loss of choice and free will is enslavement).

acd 13y ago

It is a social science with assumptions on how things works. A lot of economic theories are just that assumptions, assumptions on how the market works. If you have the time watch Professor Steve Keens one of the economists who predicted the 2008 subprime bubble criticize main stream economics. Especially the Federal reserve system which is privately owned by the biggest banks. Read on Edward Griffins google the creature from Jekyll island. In that information you will find that the FED was created by a among others senator Aldrich who's daughter was married to one of the banks who created the FED. Thus private banks create debt out of thin air more now so than ever they are backed up by central banks. In the European central bank, the head of the bank comes from Goldman Sachs. There is a documentary called 97% owned which states 97% of all money in circulation are now debt just 3% is cash. Ever wonder how the rich gets richer?

atmosx 13y ago

You can't apply the scientific method and when coming back in the real world leaving models and presumptions aside you see that economists never play an important role. They easily justify their failures no matter how big. You can't even trust history books to tell you if the X policy was a success or failure. In order to understand economics in my view, you have to know how politics work. Politicians and nations or people in power at any given time can turn a debt to 0 or to a war. Of course in a democracy it's more complicated, but generally that's the main idea. The their puppets try to justify the move. It is what is happening in Greece, in the USA, in Italy and in other parts of world. Rationality and math has little to do with economics. So since economists never predict anything really (when they do they get a Nobel), I hardly see this as a science. As for the argument that physics or biology is not a science, I can know this: the same experiment can done time and again giving the same result. Try it in real-life economics...

yetanotherphd 13y ago
Lacking predictive power is indeed a big issue of economics. However you are completely wrong about sovereign debt. It is a minor issue, and defaults almost never result in wars. Argentina defaulted or restructured its debt 4 times since 1980.

forgottenpaswrd 13y ago

No, it is not. Nor it should be. Economist call their discipline "social science" basically because they suffer from "science envy". They want to believe that there are simple things like "water molecule is the bonding of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen". But in economy they are not, as economy is about the most flexible thing on Earth, humans and the relationship between them. Economy is about dogma, there are Keynesians dogma followers(that look like never read a book of Keynes), Austrian dogma followers, and so on. Nothing to do with science but with power grabbing. Today all institutions are dominated by keynesians ands as everybody can see they are making the world a worse place.

lutusp 13y ago

I'm astonished that these questions get asked again and again, about fields that are obviously not sciences. Fields that can and do test their theories against reality in practical, empirical tests, that discard falsified theories, and that have a corpus of supporting evidence that forces all similarly equipped observers to the same conclusion, are sciences. The rest are pseudosciences whose status is clearly shown by innumerable articles whose titles end in a question mark. http://xkcd.com/435/ http://xkcd.com/435/

eru 13y ago
Microeconomics is a science by that definition. Mathematics is not (or not really).
- mike_esspe 13y ago
  Mathematical proofs are falsifiable, and there are a lot of hypotheses, that are not proved yet: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unsolved_problems_in_mathematics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unsolved_problems_in_m...
  - lutusp 13y ago
    > Mathematical proofs are falsifiable No, they aren't. A mathematical proof is by definition unfalsifiable. If an error is found in a proof (as with Wiles' proof of Fermat's Last Theorem), that it isn't a proof ... yet. And mathematical proofs aren't empirical, another requirement for science. Scientific theories are falsifiable in perpetuity because the possibility always exists for new empirical evidence to show up that falsifies an existing theory. This possibility doesn't exist for mathematical proofs.
- mpweiher 13y ago
  I don't think mathematics was ever considered a science. See the definition of the 'liberal arts', which includes science and math as separate entities: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_arts_education http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_arts_education
13y ago

_Simon 13y ago

Yet more intelligentsia bullshit from the Guardian. No. Economics is categorically not a science. It's not even a social science. It is, at best, one of the humanities.

tomcdonnell 13y ago

I consider economics to be more like a branch of philosophy than a science. The way to judge a good economic theory from bad one is to evaluate the soundness of its arguments. Historical data can never confirm or refute an economic theory because people have free will, and can act any way they choose.

yason 13y ago

Why does it matter, why is that question such a hot potato?

bjourne 13y ago
Take all the fast food workers that strikes to raise their minimum wage from ~$7 to $15/hour because they need to work more than 8h or are dependent on food stamps. Many (most?) economists think that that will have disastrous consequences for the US economy. Iff economy is a science, then their view should be taken into account because it is based on solid scientifically-backed evidence. Exactly like how you would take the view of climate scientists very seriously if you knew climate science was a real science. But if economy is not a science, that means there is no evidence either or. Then you have no one else results to rely on and have to use your own common sense to analyze questions like the above one.
- yason 13y ago
  And does that matter? Most things are like that. The miniscule subset of all things in the universe that we do know scientifically doesn't mean that the things outside that subset don't provide any value. If an economic theory is useful even if it doesn't have a proof like in hard sciences it provides value nevertheless. There are scientifically proven things that are undisputable but which, on the other hand, aren't much of a value either now but maybe of great value later, at some point in the future. But merely having scientific evidence is not an implication of value. If something seems to work, it seems to work. If that something also gets scientifically verified at some point it might turn out to have additional value, too. But it still works if it happened to worked before that. Of all the information verified in hard sciences only a part is practically valuable in running societies, governments, states, and efforts involving humans. The minimum wage of fast food workers is a problem that has no scientific answer and which is also probably quite hard to approach scientifically in the first place. I suppose that the majority of question in a human society are like that. An inflated appreciation towards scientifically verified information tends to overlook everything else that isn't scientifically verified. Yet all those things lacking scientific verification are things among which new theories are discovered and some of those do eventually become proven and verified. Yet ultimately, there are no truths, just opinions. Some opinions are individual opinions and may not be shared by many. Some opinions are reasonably based on evidence from various scientific experiments and some of that evidence is so solid that it would be hard to convince most of individuals in our culture otherwise. The physical theories involving air travel are accepted and tested by millions of people every day: they're effectively betting their lives against the theories explaining flight being correct. So the opinions are shared by many if not most people and they practically become something we consider a truth. Yet what happens is not that it becomes more true or a more absolute truth: what happens is that you convince more people —— and often for a good reason, but objectively that's what can be seen happening. In the end, all we have is our mind and the way we make it up.

alan_cx 13y ago

Surely the question should be, "Can you apply the scientific method to economics?".

berntb 13y ago
There are lots of non-experimental subjects at any university -- history, archeology, etc. The ideologists wanting to demote economics never seem to want to also throw geology out of the university. (In the future, some gigantic geo engineering might make geology experimental, the same goes for "perfect" computer models of society and economic experiments. Don't hold your breath, unless we argue inside such a model now; wonder what the hypothesis is? :-) )
- marcosdumay 13y ago
  Eh, sorry, but geology is full of theories that were (and are) later tested, most getting discarded after the testing, and a few holding up and being accepted as true. Just like any science out there. Do you know of any macroeconomical (because, really, that's all about macro) theory that was discarded since Keynes become mainstream?
  - berntb 13y ago
    The "scientific method" -- which I commented on -- needs to formulate hypotheses, test them and so on. That can't reliably be done in any mostly historical science, by definition. (And of course you can randomly test some things in historical sciences too. E.g. finding historical trading patterns by looking at materials used for artefacts, diet by looking at enamel of skeletons, etc etc. Other things won't find any possible test solution, ever.)

jahaja 13y ago

It was much clearer when it was more appropriately called "Political Economy". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_economy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_economy