Is Economics a Pseudo-Science?

[John Dibble]

No. So long as economic studies are conducted using the scientific method they can't be considered pseudo-science. However, that does not mean that economics is an exacting science like physics. It is an inexact science, perhaps within the realm of social psychology.

[John Dibble]

Yes.

Why?

[John Dibble]

No. So long as economic studies are conducted using the scientific method they can't be considered pseudo-science. However, that does not mean that economics is an exacting science like physics. It is an inexact science, perhaps within the realm of social psychology.

Yes, but that takes the idea that human behavior is a constant. (ie. There is such a thing as human nature and it is static and unchanging; thus we can apply the scientific method to discover the likely patterns caused by this behaviour.)

Rather, human Behaviour is rather shaped not so much by economics, but what we think is economical.

Perhaps another term would be "self-fulfilling prophecy".

Like I said, it's not an exact science, but that doesn't make it a pseudoscience. Pseudoscience is something that tries to pass itself off as scientific, but does not actually follow the scientific method. If an economic study follows the scientific method, then it's science. If the behavior being absolutely constant is a requirement for a field to be science, then you have to admit that psychology - the study of human and animal behavior - isn't a science. Economics is a study of probable economic behavior, not an exacting prediction of every last decision people will make.

[John Dibble]

Like economics, politics is a social science.  There are theories about how people will behave in certain circumstances but honestly there are no hard laws about it.  So, what I am saying is that linguistically when I talk of something being a "science" (not when I talk of "social science") I am talking about something which has these so-called "hard laws".  In my book, because economics lacks these, I label it pseudoscience.

Personally I don't view the lack of hard laws as making something not a science. If the lack of hard laws makes something not a science, then you have to say psychology isn't science - yet the bulk of the scientific community would disagree with such an assertion. Meteorologists don't always predict the weather correctly, but you probably wouldn't argue that they aren't scientists.

To me science is not about hard rules. Science is a base of knowledge that has been gained through logical, precise study and research. (scientific methods) Sometimes this will result in finding absolute rules, sometimes it could find certain things are completely random, and it can find things inbetween - generalities and probabilities. Science is not only a tool to find absolutes, but to make predictions based on previous data.