Is the dismal science even possible?

Comments (18)

1. I always thought economics was a branch of psychology. So, in answer to your question, no.

2. My thoughts exactly.

   It might be a science in the same way that literature criticism is a science – where the subject matter is constantly studying the theory and making an effort to break it.

3. … and so has no standing in any ontology of society

   What does ontology have to do with it? You surely don’t think that scientists spend a lot of time studying ontology.

   I mean, linguistics is a science because it involves natural kinds

   There are no natural kinds.

   … and because we are studying societies.

   Economic behavior is part of the behavior of a society. So there’s your answer already.

   Economics, psychology, sociology, political science, anthropology – they are all studies of human behavior. As to whether they are really science – well, many scientists and mathematicians have wondered that. I guess it depends on what you take “science” to mean.

4. On this point, as on so many others, I think Thorstein Veblen had it right … economics is a branch of anthropology.

   Also, to expand somewhat, I agree with Richard Lewontin and others who see economics as the study of how any organism ‘makes a living’ … which includes rabbits and owls as well as humans.

   1. I’ve been reading a very interesting book called “Debt: the First 5,000 Years” by David Graeber, an anthropologist. It’s basically an anthropological look at the idea of debt. But if what he says is any indication, if economics is a branch of anthropology, then economists have a really poor understanding of their own field…

5. If you do a google search for “is economics a science”, you’ll see plenty of discussion by prominent blogging economists. However, they are approaching the issue from a totally different perspective (i.e. can theories be falsified, can knowledge advance).

   As for the issues raised here, as a scientist, all I can say is “huh?”. Abstractions? Ontology? I can hold money in my hand… don’t tell me it isn’t real. I can measure the exchange of money… don’t tell me that it isn’t real. The fact that people ascribe abstract meanings to money is only tangentially relevant to economics as a science. It is why we CARE about economics… but it doesn’t affect the fact that something is going on, we can observe it, and try to understand the dynamics behind it.

   This concern with abstraction seems to match with Richard Carter’s comment that psychology isn’t a science. Building on this talk of “abstraction” and earlier talks about “reductionism” I’m assuming that the objection is against the mentalist theories that are used in psychology (though maybe he’d like to be explicit). Who says that every theory needs to be absolutely reductionist? There is some value in theories being understandable also.

   1. Philosophers of science agree on few things, but one is that the best theories in a science generate an ontology for the domain being investigated. My point is that we have no reason think that the best theories of economics could generate an ontology of economics that was not just an ontology of social objects in some social science, either psychological or sociological or both.

      In philosophy speak this is to say economics has no natural kinds, and therefore no laws. No laws, no explanations, no explanations, no science. QED.

6. Like psychology and many other disciplines, economics is not one single activity. People in economics departments do sometimes undertake empirical studies of how societies make a living, but they also do something markedly different: they explore the deductive implications of the systems that these societies use to explain and order some aspects of their material existence. To use a distinction introduced by Kenneth Pike, economics as the sociology (or anthropology) of material life is etic, economics as the formal grammar of money is emic because, money, no less than speech, is something uttered and, as you pointed out, has only a virtual, social existence. Genuinely empirical economics is like the sociology of religion. Deductive economics is like theology.

7. Is Arrow’s Impossibility Theorem a result from economics, philosophy, game theory, or sociology?

   If we restrict ourselves to economics of non-human social animals, then it sometimes provides characteristic explanations useful for sociobiology/ethology/ecology etc:
   Hölldobler B, Lumsden CJ (1980) Territorial Strategies in Ants,
   Kirman (1993) Ants, rationality, and recruitment

   1. It’s a result of mathematics (game theory) I think. That an economist came up with it is beside the point. A patent clerk came up with the theory of special relativity, but that doesn’t make the result one of patent law.

8. Jim Harrison: Genuinely empirical economics is like the sociology of religion. Deductive economics is like theology.

   Oh zing!

9. Economics is an Ontology.

   Classes are possible
   Kinds are needed

10. I suspect it may have been an abstraction we took to without much difficulty.

    ‘like a great cattle dun in the sky’

    This pleasant dream is an early med. poetic appeal to the size of ones wallet, bank vault or social rank. Cows and the slave are the standard unit of currency. Material culture is pretty much the same for all levels of society so status is measured by quantity. Having one cow determines that you are a member of the lowest free rank of society. Having many that you have a much higher status and different legal identity.

    You may not own the cow or cows, you could be entering into a social transaction in order to gain cattle with the owner of the great cattle dun, you’re Lord if you enter into such bonds of obligation with him. Generally that will consist of an exchange of goods and services, food rent etc.

    Whole series of complex social transactions and institutions built around a grass eating pooh machine which I think you could describe as abstract.

    The whole society from top to bottom is built on the basis of these exchanges. Lord simple means loaf giver. Households right across the social scale from top to bottom probable functioned on this basis. The householder gave gifts of food to his dependants and derived authority, position and ultimately legal status (his honour price) from this exchange.
    The householders legal status extends to his dependants. You are responsible for individual legal indiscretion collectively as a group and have an clear incentive to self police.

    The law is based on a system of fines, i.e. the loss of cattle, so screw up and you slide down the social scale.

    Tightly interlocked social system built around the cow as a unit of exchange.

11. The cow has shifted as an abstraction and does not have the same bragging rights it once had. In early med. poetry its a distinctly sexy beast.

    1. Obviously, we should immediately rename our currencies the Kuh.

12. With some of the suggestions sprouting forth from U.S presidential hopefuls I await the one who attempts to reach further back in time than the gold standard and calls for the full reintroduction of the Kuh.

    It fits well with the return to the backwoods and traditional values of right wing fringe fantasy politics and its certainly utterly bonkers so every chance they would find the idea somewhat attractive.

    A change of name from the tea part to the kuh party? Personally I would run with the Moo Moo league of America, it seems rather apt.

13. I must suggest it to Newt. He could just dispense with speech writing and thought completely and just stand up and go mooooooooooooooo.

    Then again he seems to be doing that already.

14. It strikes me that one problem here is the assumption that economics is about money. While that is a handy metric, I think most economists are well aware of its limitations. At its essence, economics is not much more “dismal” than study of ecosystems or climate. However, it is further muddied as it tends to get very political.

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