Is economics a natural science?

Social Research, Summer, 2004 by Julie A. Nelson

Most people muddle through, one way or another, combining naive dualism, reductionism, and romanticism while trying not to think of the philosophy behind their beliefs overly much. A person who is a thoroughly detached reductionist at work will be thoroughly emotionally attached to her three-year-old child. The romantic poet is glad that the person who works on his car pays attention to Newtonian mechanics. The Christian will feel that God works in spiritual ways, and not pay too much attention to the part of her creed that says, "I believe in the resurrection of the body." The neoclassical economist applies reductionist techniques to romantic notions, and, typically, washes his hands of social responsibility while in a professional role. We deal with the split between nature perceived as mechanical, and our own lives perceived as meaningful, mostly by not thinking about it too much.

A BETTER NOTION OF SCIENCE

Heilbroner is, however, using a rather dated image of what natural sciences are about. More recent work in physics demonstrates that the natural world is not the through-and-through billiard-ball universe envisioned in the Newtonian model. That model does a good job of explaining physical phenomena on the scale we observe with our unaided abilities of human perception: wheels, levers, and billiard balls will move as predicted by Newtonian equations. However, in the centuries since Newton, when scientists have examined phenomena that are much bigger (in astronomy, for example) or much smaller (in particle physics), the image of the natural world as a mechanical and deterministic machine has been shown to be inadequate. Study of black holes, quantum mechanics, and complexity bring in elements that cannot be explained with mechanical notions. Energies, interrelations, a large role for randomness, and fundamental unpredictability are now recognized as important parts of the nature of "nature."

In contrast to an image of science as about the uncovering of the laws and rules governing a passive and mechanistic nature, there has long existed an alternative image. This is the idea of science as a purposeful enterprise, motivated at its base by both a curiosity about the world and a desire to solve problems at hand. The essence of such a science is skepticism and an absence of dogma--even, when the case demands, about the dogma that the world must be seen as strictly ordered by deterministic natural laws. This kind of science demands a questioning attitude, creative thought, an open mind, a habit of returning again and again to observation, a capacity to maintain attention to detail, a willingness to tolerate and investigate the "outlier" cases, the patience to methodically investigate alternative explanations, and the sense to notice how one's knowledge changes the world. A common element in the work of those who pursue such a science is an idea of the world as made up of evolving processes and their intricate interrelationships, instead of as fundamentally made of billiard-ball-type units. (1)