Re: LOV and LTV

["Justin Schwartz" <jkschw@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

> ^^^^^^^^^
>
> CB: Are you saying that probablistic laws are not fuzzier than laws that
> are more definitive ?

Depends on the probablistic laws. The laws of quantum mechanics are as
precise as can be. So too are the laws of Mendelian genetics. Essentially
they can predict the probabilities they describe extremely precisely. A
"law" of thefalling rate of profit is not like that that.

> The laws of physics are formulated with plenty of exceptions. Take the
> first law of Newton and Galilei as presented by Einstein below.  The clause
> "removed sufficiently far from other bodies" is a ceteris paribus clause
> and implies exceptions to the law ( i.e. when the body is not removed
> sufficiently from other bodies there is an exception).

Not the same thing. If you factor in the gravitational attraction of other
bodies, you can (with difficulty, the many-body problem is very
challenging), predict the path of the body affected as precisely as you
like. With physics, the sources of deviation are few in kind, well
understood, and rigorously accountable for.

Social systems by contrast are open. We don't know even what kinds of things
might count as disturbances. And the "ideal type" models, freed from
disturbances, are of unclear status. The best ideal type we have of that
sort is the rational actor model underlying game theory and neoclassical
economics. Even there the terms are disputed. With the rational actor
minimax or maximin or what?

I repeat that I am not, as a social scientist, gripped with physics envy. I
do not think that physics is better as science merely because it is more
precise. I also agree that the differences between the natural and the
social sciences are differences in degree rather than kind. This was the
thesis of my doctoral dissertation. That doesn't mean that there are no
differences.

jks

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