["Followup-To:" header set to sci.econ.]
On Fri, 02 Feb 2007 05:30:28 -0500, Bob Kolker in sci.econ
confessed to the world saying:
(David P.) wrote:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_world

From the time of Newton, or perhaps even Descartes,
many branches of modern science (perhaps the most
extreme example being economics) have been
increasingly accused of losing perspective due to their
over-stretched efforts to find explanations of nature
which are easily analysed in terms of easily measured
and easily mathematicised terms.

Economics is NOT a science. It never was a science. It will never be a
science. Built in to every economic theory is an explanation of why its
predictions sometimes fail.

If that were true then the exeperiments that people like
Plott and Smith engage in should produce purely random
outcomes.

If the experimental data produces patterned outcomes that
trace to underlying causal factors then economics can be
pursued as a science. The pure logic of the subject, be
it modern neoclassical analysis (say Varian) or the
deductive approach of say Mises (man thinks and acts
to accomplish self-defined ends) is similarly just as
"scientific" as pure math.

jmh