"well you know what they say about economics. It’s just like physics, except in physics 3% of the theories apply to 97% of the cases, where as in economics 97% of the theories apply to 3% of the cases."
I don't think "fascination with the special case" is a bad thing at all. I do think, though, that when your theories are so far from general that new cases tend to require new theories, you don't really have a science.... It doesn't bother me personally if economics is not much of a science, but as its practioners generally claim it is, I think the discrepancy is interesting.
The way I've put this before (with some exaggeration, granted) is, how much of a science can economics really be when nobel prizes in the field tend, every few years, to be given for work that tends to disprove/supplant work for which previous prizes were given? Again, I'd say the fundamental ideas either aren't on a very sound footing yet or are so general that the ways to apply them to "real" situations need significant amounts of work...
Of course, unlike some detractors, I don't think my criticisms (even if accurate, which you may not feel they are) mean economics isn't "really" a science. It just may be at a stage where there's not yet enough data or knowledge of fundamental principles to work at the level that physics (or even chemistry or molecular biology) does. After all, biology wasn't much of a science around the time of Linnaeus. (And I suppose there are physicists who think it still isn't ;-) ).
The way I've put this before (with some exaggeration, granted) is, how much of a science can economics really be when nobel prizes in the field tend, every few years, to be given for work that tends to disprove/supplant work for which previous prizes were given? Again, I'd say the fundamental ideas either aren't on a very sound footing yet or are so general that the ways to apply them to "real" situations need significant amounts of work...
Of course, unlike some detractors, I don't think my criticisms (even if accurate, which you may not feel they are) mean economics isn't "really" a science. It just may be at a stage where there's not yet enough data or knowledge of fundamental principles to work at the level that physics (or even chemistry or molecular biology) does. After all, biology wasn't much of a science around the time of Linnaeus. (And I suppose there are physicists who think it still isn't ;-) ).
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