Erik Reuter wrote:
>
> I think the others who have been arguing against Economics as a hard
science
> have an intuitive idea of what they "mean", but perhaps they haven't
explained
> well.
Yea yea yea, I know who you are talking about. :-) Well, here it is. I'd
appreciate feedback for clarity, etc.
Well, I roped myself into writing a fairly long piece (or pieces) on the
nature of science. I thought about the easiest way to do this, and have
decided to start with considering the paradigm science: classical
mechanics/universal gravitation (CM/UG). It has the advantage of being the
first real science, and containing pretty much all that one finds in
science.
Now, I know that people would argue that the Greeks had science, including
some rather respected physicists. However, the lack of respect for
experimentalists among Greek society tends to make me draw the line after
the Greeks. I would contend that it was the cross between the intellectual
traditions of logic and mathematics that were reclaimed during the
Renaissance and the craftsman tradition that predated the Renaissance as
well as being honored during it.
Without going into a great deal of history, let me just make the following
observations about CM/UG.
1) It assumes that the objects under study act according to laws of nature,
not according to volition
2) It is empirically based
3) It is experimentally based.
4) It makes broad predictions from a few basic principals
5) It makes precise predictions
6) It is reductionistic
7) It is synthetic
8) It is falsifiable by additional experiments
9) It survives as a special case of the newer theory
Let me look the items in order.
1) The first seems self evident to us now, and probably did at the time.
While there were some that believed that there were spirits that moved the
planets according to their volition, centuries of observations created a
general understanding of natural laws. Indeed, Christianity, especially as
interpreted by Tommy Aquinas, promoted natural philosophy as studying how
God set up the world. Thus, one did not look for the direct will of the
angels, but for the rules that God set down at creation.
One reason that this is mentioned here and usually not in general
discussions of science is it's bearing on whether the social sciences are
really sciences or something else. I am assuming that human beings do have
volition, and that we can make choices. Thus, general rules that might be
followed for 5000 years might then be violated as we gain a new
understanding of ourselves. The development of representative democracies
is one example of this. Before that, one could have made a "historical law"
that such were impossible.
A small though experiment might help to illustrate this. Suppose someone
proposed that it was possible, for a great charismatic theorist and orator
to convince electrons that they should be able to be in intermediate states.
Not even worth laughing at. Then, think of the possibility that a
charismatic political genius with phenomenal insight were able to forge a
new type of political order in which many of the general rules of the
inefficiencies of large organizations were overcome because the individual
goals were so strongly tied to the group goals.
Well, it may or may not happen in the future, but it is possible enough to
keep Weber's law at the level of Newton's law.
2) CM/UG is totally based on observation. Internal reflection is not used
at all. There is no privledged access to internal states, as there is with
the social sciences.
3) The basis of CM is not just the observation , but deliberate
experimentation. Kant points out the importance of this in "The Critique of
Pure Reason." Observation leads to deliberate isolation of potential key
variables which leads to additional experimental observation and further
refinement of the theory.
It is worth noting that every measurement doesn't have to be an experiment.
Thousands of planets were not put in orbit around thousands of suns. But,
the experiements of Galileo did shed light on the motion of the planets.
4) Which leads to the fourth principal. From very few laws comes a wealth
of predictions. Indeed, even a quick perusal of Goldstein's "Classical
Mechanics" shows just how rich classical mechanics is. The same can be said
for Classical Electrodynamics and Jackson. Both are extremely simple at
their base, but phenomenally rich in their predictive power.
5) The predictions of CM/UG are extremely precise. This allows for very
robust testing of the theory, and the search for anomalies. Most of the
time, anomalies (such as the one observed in the orbit of the moon) are
eventually resolved by additional skill in applying the theory. Very
occasionally, as with the orbit of Mercury, the anomalies turn out the be
the signal of new physics.
6) This is seen from the beginning when Newton invented calculus to be able
to reduce the orbits of planets to equivalent point masses. Other theories
that deal with complex items can, in principal, be reduced to simpler
components. For example, complex aerodynamic problems are reducible to the
actions of the individual atoms.
7) Great theories of physics put together different fields that are not
always clearly linked. With CM/UG, the linkage was the behavior of bodies
on the earth and the orbit of the planets. E&M linked electricity and
magnetism, while SR linked the transforms of electromagnetism and mechanics.
8) The theory can be falsified. UG was falsified by the orbit of Mercury,
as I mentioned. Thousands, maybe millions of experiments have been done in
classical mechanics, with a wide variety of setups, all of which validated
classical mechanics. While we now know areas where the predictions are not
valid (as understood by QM, SR, and GR), the wealth of predictive power is
still amazing.
9) Which leads to the last point. Even after falsification by experiment,
it survives as a special case of the newer theories. One can take the limit
values of QM, SR, and GR and obtain classical mechanics. The same is true
for Classical Electromagnetism. Indeed, that theory has been formally
derived, IIRC, from QED.
Using this as a paradigm example of science does not mean that, for
something to be a science, instead of another field, all points have to be
present. Indeed, the soft to hard science sliding scale can be seen as a
measure of how well a field fits this paradigm.
In another post, I will argue why I think that the fit between economics and
this paradigm is not close enough for economics to be called a science.
But, even before I do, I would like to make a statement. "Not a science"
does not mean "Not a worthwhile area of intellectual endeavor." Indeed, one
of my favorite intellectual pastimes (scripture study) is not a science.
Also, if there is time, I'll address the popular idea of "the scientific
method" and compare/contrast it with my experience of the actual methodology
of scientists.
Dan M.
