In an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal Joseph Epstein repeats a theme I have enunciated myself:
Whether economics is a science at all has long been in doubt, chiefly because the subject is heavily politicized. There are no liberal and conservative physics, no right- or left-wing chemistry, but economists do line up politically—Marxists vs. free-marketeers, Keynesians vs. Hayekians—in a way that squashes the claim to objective scientific standing.
“I much like Milton Friedman, George Stigler, Gary Becker and other of the University of Chicago economists,†my friend Edward Shils once told me. “But you know, Joseph, I fear they are insufficiently impressed by the mysteries of life.†Years ago I was at lunch with a Chicago-trained economist who asked me about an article on the subject of psychiatry going awry that was about to run in a magazine I was editing. I mentioned that one of the ways it had done so was by blithely accepting transgender surgical operations, which the author of the article argued would one day be viewed as the lobotomies of our time.
“I happen to know that until now there have been no lawsuits against physicians performing these surgeries,†my companion replied, “so I assume market satisfaction.†I gulped. Market satisfaction—surely the least interesting aspect of the complex subject of transgender surgery, and further evidence of the shortsightedness of economic thinking.
In a sense his op-ed is self-refuting. Psychology is politicized, too. All of the social sciences are politicized, especially when money is involved. As to there being no Democratic or Republican physics, give it time. That’s being worked on.
My view is that it is quite possible to be a science but not a predictive science and that economics fits that description quite neatly. It’s a descriptive science like anthropology or sociology not a predictive one like chemistry or physics.
A distinctive problem that economics has that anthropology does not is that an alarming number of economists were inspired to pursue the study by reading Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series. There are far too many would-be Hari Seldons out there, longing to direct the course of human history over a period of thousands of years. It might be that economics will arrive at that point some day but that day is millennia away.
Meanwhile, while it’s very helpful as a guide to policy to know that the higher the price, the fewer the purchases (for ordinary goods) don’t expect an economist to tell you how many sales will be lost by increasing the price of something by a dollar.
For a progressive, everything is subjective. There are no objective facts.
For them, science is developed through polling. If General Relativity is too racist, develop a more socially acceptable theory, and validate it by election.
I recall a college math professor declaring that math was racist or something similar. Even as cynical as I am, I was still stunned with NYC shutting down its gifted student program because it was racist. Apparently, intelligence should be measured by quota.
Asimov was an arrogant idiot, at best. In the essay that @steve loves to link, he claims we are at the end of science. His examples should be written in crayon.
When he wrote the essay, validation of the expanding universe occured 15 years earlier. (The original validation turned out to be wrong.) Gravity was slowing the expansion, and the big question was whether the universe would collapse or expand forever.
Lo and behold, the answer is neither. The expansion is not slowing. It is accelerating, and scientists have no idea of why. Dark matter and energy are proposed as the cause, but they are just placeholders for “we do not know.”
Interestingly, today’s physicists are excited. When they get something wrong, it is an addition to scientific knowledge. An accelerating expansion is not a refutation of all past science. Instead, scientific knowledge has increased. One unknown unknown has become a known unknown.
But for Asimov, his science fiction is now just fiction. His books are as much about science as Winnie the Pooh.
This is almost an issue of philosophy.
Is “ultimate†economics more like Newtonian physics or Quantum mechanics?
Is it something we can predict to an arbitrary degree of precision if we had the right equations and the right data.
Or is it statistical – that the equations will only give probabilities?
I think that for the foreseeable future it will be even less predictive than that.
That doesn’t mean it wouldn’t be a science. Just not a predictive science.
Interesting, except the universe is not expanding.
Half of my docs are left leaning. No one thinks that General Relativity is racist. Is there some 20 y/o college co-ed or some 25 y/o hipster somewhere that thinks that? probably, but who cares? Oh, sorry, you do. If you can find a few people with that belief then you can claim everyone on the left believes that. And you call Asimov an idiot!
Back on topic, I think that econ is predictive in some very specific areas, but in the areas that we argue the most about, especially macro, it is more religion than science in a lot of ways. That said, the big takeaways are still pretty useful. Incentives matter is one people should always remember.
Steve
That’s very much along the lines of what I was talking about. You might say that’s prescriptive rather than predictive. Yes, there’s no question in my mind that incentives matter. How much do they matter? Is the relationship linear, geometric, n log n, increasing, decreasing?
John Maynard Keynes called them animal spirits.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_spirits_(Keynes)
“How much do they matter? Is the relationship linear, geometric, n log n, increasing, decreasing?”
Depends doesnt it? The size of the reward, the correct reward, how soon you achieve the payout, etc. People really dont behave exactly like the homo economicus that conservatives and libertarians depend upon in their models. Sometimes people value something other than money. When you lead people you need to figure that out. Some people dont respond to much of anything, at least what you willing to offer, so you get rid of them. That said, most people do respond to monetary incentives at some point.
Steve
The point is that, unless you know the answers to my questions in advance, you cannot make predictions.
There may be no Republican or Democratic physics, but there is definitely now woke and unwoke physics. Mathematics is also now problematical. Every hard science is under attack by the SJWs, too many of whom have infested or cowed the bureaucracy of academia and twisted it to do their bidding.
Asimov wrote in a day when there seemed to be no limit to what science might achieve (although his space travelers had to write out equations by hand to perform their interdimensional Jumps. His non-fiction science books were equally unpredictive). I don’t fault him for Hari Seldon. Trying to predict the future accurately goes far further back than Nostradamus. The Witch of Endor comes to mind.
“but there is definitely now woke and unwoke physics. Mathematics is also now problematical. ”
No doubt there are a few professors pushing that. They probably get big play in conservative circles, with stories about them cycled endlessly on Drudge and Breitbart. However, most math and physics people are pretty apolitical geeks. Having a kid who majored in both math and physics we certainly didnt see any of that. Math was just math. Physics was just physics.
Steve
@steve
I do not consider everybody on the left a Democrat. In any case, one woke math professor declaring math is racist is too many, and “one bad apple will spoil the whole barrel.”
@TarsTarkas
My reference to Asimov is based on an essay @steve has linked to more than once. It is about somebody writing to him about science constantly changing, and in the essay, he is an arrogant know-it-all prick. And, he is wrong.
Something frequently ignored, particularly by Republicans, is that most Democrats are not “on the left”. It is still the case that most Democrats are moderates or even conservatives. The left wing has outsized influence because of the media and funding.
And my reference to Isaac Asimov was because of the significant number of economists, e.g. Paul Krugman, who’ve said in interviews they were inspired to become economists by Hari Seldon in the Foundation series and it was as close as they could get to psychohistory.