Economics — science succumbed to universalist temptations
from Lars Syll
All social sciences, to a greater or lesser degree, start with a yearning for a universal language, into which they can fit such particulars as suit their view of things. Their model of knowledge thus aspires to the precision and generality of the natural sciences. Once we understand human behavior in terms of some universal and – crucially – ahistorical principle, we can aspire to control (and of course improve) it.
No social science has succumbed to this temptation more than economics. Its favored universal language is mathematics. Its models of human behavior are built not on close observation, but on hypotheses that, if not quite plucked from the air, are unconsciously plucked from economists’ intellectual and political environments. These then form the premises of logical reasoning of the type, “All sheep are white, therefore the next sheep I meet will be white.” In economics: “All humans are rational utility maximizers. Therefore, in any situation, they will act in such a way as to maximize their utility.” This method gives economics a unique predictive power, especially as the utilities can all be expressed and manipulated quantitatively. It makes economics, in Paul Samuelson’s words, the “queen of the social sciences.”
In principle, economists don’t deny the need to test their conclusions. At this point, history, one might have thought, would be particularly useful. Is it really the case that all sheep are white, in every place and clime? But most economists disdain the “evidence” of history, regarding it as little better than anecdotage. They approach history by one route: econometrics. At best, the past is a field for statistical inquiry.
The economist Robert Solow offers a devastating critique of the identification of economic history with econometrics, or “history blind” as he calls it:
“The best and brightest in the profession proceed as if economics is the physics of society. There is a single universally valid model. It only needs to be applied. You could drop a modern economist from a time machine … at any time, in any place, along with his or her personal computer; he or she could set up in business without even bothering to ask what time and which place.”
Leave a comment
—– look inside —– $5.94 / $20.00
—– look inside —– $4.90 / $8.00
—– look inside —– $15.99
—– look inside —– $5.99 / 12.99
—– look inside —– $5.93 / $12.99
—– look inside —– $4.97 / $9.90
—— Ugarteche, Puyana and Madi ——
Gerson Lima / Maria Alejandra Madi
Edward Fullbrook and Jamie Morgan
————— Michael Hudson ————–
Maria Alejandra Madi / Jack Reardon
————- Edward Fullbrook ————-
—————— Steve Keen —————–
————— Richard Smith —————
————– Gustavo Marques————
– Victor Beker and Beniamino Moro –
————– Lars Pålsson Syll ————-
—————– Stuart Birks —————-
Edward Fullbrook and Jamie Morgan
———— Armando Ochangco ———-
Shimshon Bichler / Jonathan Nitzan
————— Mauro Gallegati ————–
————— Herman Daly —————-
————— Asad Zaman —————
—————– C. T. Kurien —————
————— Robert Locke —————-
Real-World Economics Review Blog 
The root is philosophical naivete wedded to a conscious or unconscious mechanistic materialism that blinds such pseudo-scientists to the limits of the mathematico-deductive method when applied to human personality within the social context. Hubris leads the foolish to assume to much.
In his ‘Treatise on Probability’ Keynes uses the term ‘pseudo-mathematics’ to describe something that uses the language of mathematics to describe something that looks like mathematics, but is actually not. For example, mathematical physics uses the language of calculus and probability to describe real world phenomena, without being unduly concerned about any logical paradoxes or incompatibilities (e.g., between relativity and quantum mechanics) that may arise. Their interest is in computation, and so they rely on laboratory experiments, not logic. Economists adapt the methods of physics, but with less concern for ’empirical proof’.
I read Robert as criticising the misuse of mathematics, not mathematics as such. Where Robert says “All social sciences, to a greater or lesser degree, start with a yearning for a universal language, into which they can fit such particulars as suit their view of things.” others have speculated on other yearnings. Perhaps we can just agree that social scientists have yearnings that cannot logically be satisfied. I find it useful to try to describe these yearnings in mathematical language, but others may not.
.
I completely agree with your statement above Dave, and that is all I too have ever meant in my own critique of the misuse of mathematics. I read Skidelsky the essentially saying the same. As a computer scientist I have used mathematics extensively — I chuckle at the arrogance of some on RWER who when they don’t get the response they want, resort to ad hominem accusing their critics of not knowing math — and know the power, elegance, and beauty one can find in its solutions to problems that fall within its domain. My own critique is not aimed at mathematics per se, but the misuse of mathematics, the blind ahistorical anti-philosophical hubris (a form of willful ignorance, scientism) that is unable to view itself objectively. Again and again I read the same critique, to wit:
.
.
Economics, being a social science studying human(s) social behavior, is not and never can be reduced to physics. As Lars notes (2016) “murder is unfortunately the only way to reduce biology to chemistry.” That does not mean we cannot learn something about social phenomena from the use of mathematics, whether it be through statistics, chaos theory etc., only that a proper sense of humility and philosophical awareness of the limitations of mathematics are necessary to avoid becoming afflicted with mathematical pride and statistical egotism, not to mention spiritual blindness.[1]
.
Statisticians may announce laws governing a large number of either atoms or persons but not for a single individual atom or person. Yet, a single person can, in unpredictable ways (indeterminacy) change the course of history.
.
It is truly ironic that both modern physics (i.e., quantum mechanics) and biology have recognized the limitations of philosophic reductionism (i.e., mechanistic materialism) as well as methodological reductionism, which in Mainstream Economics (ME) economics can be seen in “monetary reductionism (Söderbaum 2018, 13)”, yet ME has yet to come to terms with these transformations in understanding that the so-called “hard sciences” have already experienced.[2,3,4]
.
~ ~ ~
.
[1] I am not referring to institutional religion here, nor am I referring to religious “beliefs” per se. Rather, it is the sincere experiential hunger for truth that is capable of recognizing all three levels of human experiential reality-recognition: facts (matter-energy), meanings (mind), and values (spirit) all perceived in the mind of the scientist and coordinated and unified in the personality-experience through philosophy.
.
[2] Quantum Mechanics (QM) is expressed through mathematical formalism. Yet, one of the more profound insights emerging from the more mature developments of QM is that the participating scientist and his/her experiential mind cannot be excluded from the problem domain.
.
[3] Twenty-first century biology has (and still is) going through a revolution in theoretical thinking (see, for example, the Vienna Series on Theoretical Biology). Carl Woese sums up this transformation in conceptual insight:
.
Great post Rob. It is science that has the epistemological problem NOT wisdom which can and does rigorously include science in its calculus.
Economics is dead, long live Wisdomics-Gracenomics, which includes and completes all of the valid heterodox insights so often espoused here.
Rob, I mostly agree with you, but the physicists I talk to seem an exception to your characterisation. They take the illogicalities thrown up by the attempts to mathematize contemporary physics as a challenge and are actively seeking to reform current theories.
Following Keynes’ distinction between pseudo-mathematics and ‘the real deal’ some have sought a distinction between pseudo-science and the real deal. Thus while I wont argue with those who say that most physicists are too dogmatic, I wouldn’t want to tar them all with the same brush.
Most physicists and most scientists have an epistemological and methodological problem, and unwillingness to the point of habitual inability to look for and try to actively integrate perspectives and the truths in each…prevents increased awareness and its application.
Economics has become so mathematically and theoretically abstracted that it has missed the simple (but not simplistic) problem resolving power to be found by analyzing/looking directly at the economic process and particularly its terminal ending point.
Hunters and Gatherers wandered in more than occasional austere conditions until they looked at the growing process of crops and how that could be utilized to end such austerity and increase the abundance of their food supply.
Economists should be so smart as to focus their intellect directly on what is going on right in front of and all around them in every second of the economy as it flows in the economic process.
Again in simple language Lars articulates what many ordinary thinking citizens suspect , but do not have the confidence to express their concerns. Ted
Lars, I’ve been arguing your points since the 1970s. beginning with my paper “French Industrialization Reconsidered: The Roehl Thesis,” Explorations in Economic History, 1982, a response to Richard Roehl’s paper in the same jounal in July 1976, “French Industrialization: A Reconsideration:’ and I elaborated on the shortcomings of new economic history in the introduction “The Revisionists and their Theses” 1984, of The End of the Practical Man.”,
You don’t mention these discussions or any others from the same noneconomist camp in your posting, you just argue with economists, which makes YOU part of the problem of getting anything done to make economics a prescriptive discipline.