The Purported Queen of the Social Sciences

[Michael Perelman <michael@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Economics has long prided itself as a science, modeled after physics.  From time to
time, the glaring differences between economics and physics become embarrassingly
apparent.  I was just reading a review by Herb Gintis that reminded me of another
comparison between the two disciplines which described a meeting between physicists
and economists.
Gintis's review recalls his experience reading two graduate texts, one on quantum
mechanics and another on economics.
Pool, Robert. 1989. "Strange Bedfellows." Science, vol. 245 (18 August): pp. 700-5.
  701: Physicists at the Santa Fe institute were amazed at how mathematically
sophisticated economists were.
  701: The economists were shocked at the physicists' lack of rigor.  Because
physicists have so much data, they can follow their noses or use computer
simulations.  Because economists' data is so sparse, they must carefully lay out
their assumptions.
  701: The economists thought that science meant mathematical proofs of theories and
econometric tests.  The physicists spend most of their time trying to explain
phenomenon, such as agricultural economists and economic historians.
Gintis, Herbert. 2006. "Review of Eric D. Beinhocker. The Origin of Wealth:
Evolution, Complexity, and the Radical Remaking of Economics (Boston, MA: Harvard
Business School Press)." Journal of Economic Literature, 44: 4 (December): pp.
1018-31.
1027: "... in the summer of 2001, ... I happened to be reading a popular graduate
text in quantum physics, as well as a leading graduate text in microeconomics. The
physics text began with the anomaly of black body radiation which was inexplicable
using the standard tools of electromagnetic theory. In 1900, Max Planck derived a
formula that fit the data perfectly, assuming that radiation was discrete rather than
continuous. In 1905, Albert Einstein explained another anomaly of classical
electromagnetic theory, the photoelectric effect, using Planck's trick. The text
continued, page after page, with new anomalies (Compton scattering, the spectral
lines of elements of low atomic number, etc.) and new, partially successful models
explaining the anomalies. This culminated in about 1925 with Heisenberg's wave
mechanics and Schroedinger's equation, which fully unified the field."
1027: "By contrast, the graduate microeconomics text, despite its brilliance, did not
contain a single fact in the whole thousand page volume (actually, there were two
references to facts, both in footnotes). Rather, the authors build economic theory in
axiomatic fashion, making assumptions on the basis of intuitive plausibility or
consonance with the principles of "rational action"."

-- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929

Tel. 530-898-5321
E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu
michaelperelman.wordpress.com