recently, a fairly famous economist wrote an article about economics being a science. you can read it here: nytimes/2013/10/21/opinion/yes-economics-is-a-science.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 My view: Chettys definition of science in terms of methodology is a non sequitur. The institution of science as in the consciousness of modern world has two key characteristics: 1) it is beyond the comprehension of the common (wo)man, and 2) it is singularly productive in terms of producing truths untainted by ideology and other nonepistemic interests. The cultural function of labeling something a science, therefore, is to remove it from everyday discourse. To label something a science is to make it improper for a nonspecialist to talk about it. After all, if a discourse is just some hard stuff that clever people do for the good of everyone, why should anyone else care? For something like physics, where epistemic accuracy is the driving force (i.e. it is incentive compatible for the powerholders to believe the same physics as the non-powerholders), this is defensible. For economics, the foreclosure of discussion produced by the encapsulation of this domain of discourse within the institution of science weakens the incentive compatibility constraint for the powerholders to consider the payoffs of everyone else. Especially when there are so many conflicting positions, this foreclosure is particularly perilous. The powerholders can go ahead with whatever policy they feel like is best (e.g. giving 0% interest loans to banks) and justify it with their preferred theoretical explanation (e.g. it would be far worse for the country if we did not do this), and people wont complain because it has the veneer of rarefied objectivity. My impressions is that liberal society is fundamentally incompatible with social science being award this kind of social position. Whether a liberal society is a desirable end goal is a whole other question.
Posted on: Mon, 21 Oct 2013 23:28:06 +0000
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