http://xkcd.com/435/

I agree branches of it are, but maybe some/most of it just doesn't fit the bill as the article says. But then I suppose you could say the same about string theory or multiverses. Or maybe even computational modelling in isolation (only joking!). Anyway bed time now in the UK, catch up tomorrow.

Would you consider Economics a science?

Probably not. How do you test predictions in a controlled environment?

Well, in practice its impossible to do it. But in theory, if one could find a "controlled" environment shouldn't they be able to test prediction in it.

Was astrophysics a science before humans had the capability to test predictions in a controlled environment?

Am I way off point here?

I would consider economic theory applied math. I get that you could also say that physics is applied math, but physics is a science even without the math ... It's just not as useful. So my vote is no for econ being a science ... But I don't think that diminishes its value.

I will preface this by saying that I don't know much about Economics, so if someone can provide good counterexamples, I'm happy to hear them.

First, Economics studies an artificial phenomenon created by humans. This is somewhat similar to how Engineering relies on Science, but instead is focused on creating things for humans, rather than understanding the natural world.

Second, I've never gotten the impression that Economics tries to live up to the expectations of Science. It seems much too tainted by Politics to actually remain objective, which is a critical element of good Science.

I think that your first point makes great sense. Personally, I know very little about science so we are speaking without much common knowledge here. But your first point is very true.

I think that your second point is maybe a little jaded. The field of economics does attempt to predict and explain the phenomena that are the markets. Political decisions are variables that this field deals with. Whether or not it is a science, the field does set out to remain objective - whether all practitioners succeed at this or not is probably less clear.

Perhaps there is a crossroads. Science goes about to predict and explain the natural world. However, markets and their forces have been imposed by humans and are now a part of the world we will likely never be without. Perhaps even some could argue that markets are a part of the natural world as they have been around since human civilization has been around and therefore may be a natural part of "humanity." But this isn't the point.

Economics is obviously a field in flux. Maths and sciences are pretty stable as not much is changing. But is that because humans have studied these longer and developped a much greater understanding in these fields, or is because there is truly no science behind the market forces in the world.

I am not really trying to argue for either side, but I believe this is an interesting discussion t be had

I would say that economics, as a university subject, tries to be seen as objective, but in reality it is far too tainted by politics. That said it is, in many ways, a specific part of math (many math courses offer economics as an optional module, economics is based on math given varying parameters and if you take economics you have to do a math module). I'ld say econ in itself is not a science, but the amount of math that one has to do for it can give you a good argument for saying those that do it, do a science, at least in part.

At the University i went to Business and Economic students had by far the most advanced first year calculus curriculum. It kind of dipped off after that, but even a survey level understanding of economics requires a basic understanding of Lagrange multipliers, for example.

"I think that your second point is maybe a little jaded."

This is certainly possible.

Economics is an odd area, for sure. In some ways, I agree with philcore that it could be considered an Applied Math, but how much math actually comes out of Economics? Doesn't it mostly draw from other areas? It seems much too "applied" to really be considered a field of math.

"At the University i went to Business and Economic students had by far the most advanced first year calculus curriculum. "

You must have had absolute shit Engineering and Physics programs...

I don't believe it is a field of math. I do buy that it is a field where the application of math is huge. Economists are probably some of the best mathematicians out there.

I guess the point is whether market forces actually can be predictable. And so long as human behavior is so unpredictable it can likely never be studied as a science. In theory, though, maybe it is.

@abge - we didn't have an engineering program. And the sciences had other maths, but their calculus was below ours. I imagine they caught up and surpassed us by second year of undergrad.

Yes, I completely agree that Economists need to have a very solid understanding of math.

@Lando - you absolutely don't need to know Lagrange multipliers for a survey class in Econ. You can take Econ 101 at any university without even taking calc. I would call that a survey course. You don't have to know that marginal demand is the first derivative of the demand curve in order to get the concepts. Hell even the minimizing/maximizing techniques of first year calc (first derivative = 0, second derivite is +/-, respectively) will get you through a 300 level (3rd year) econ course if you're an econ major. The lagrange multiplier is akin to vector calc and I would imagine is reserved for the most serious of econ majors destined to come up with creative derivative markets to crash our economy while making Goldman Sachs Billions again.

But maybe the university you went to, not having engineering, was the university to go to for econ and was therefore way more rigorous. But, you can't call it a survey course if you're required to know vector calc. It's officially a "hard core" course at that point.

It was Econ101. Although, I think you're right - there were two sections, one for con students and one for other majors. So the other one was probably way different.

And thinking about Econ as an applied math, I've come to the opinion that math itself is not a science. Science doesn't equal difficulty or rigor. It's simply about the application of the scientific method and discovering new things and making testable theories about the way things behave. In order to do that at a sophisticated level, it requires rigor and is usually difficult, but in simple terms fields that are difficult and rigorous ( as econ and math are) aren't necessarily sciences.

sometimes

"the lagrange multiplier is akin to vector calc and I would imagine is reserved for the most serious of econ majors destined to come up with creative derivative markets to crash our economy while making Goldman Sachs Billions again."

This isn't true at all. Any undergrad econ student needs to do a lot of constrained optimization and thus should understand lagrange multipliers. It also has nothing to do with financial derivatives lol. I'm not sure if econ should be considered be a science but I think it gets an unfair rap as a political field rather than as a branch of applied math. I think "economists" on tv are largely to blame for this misconception and also econ departments trying to attract students who are afraid of math.

Good thread tho

I definitely agree with Phil's last post.

Just to say, part of my degree is economics, and everyone that does it falls into the category of done math before and wants the possibility to do any economic module they choose in the second year, or the opposite. If you are in the first category you, as well as your general econ module, must take an advanced maths one - first year, first term, and they have you doing Lagrange multipliers within a month. Even if you are in the latter category you have to do a catch up maths (because of your one introductory economic module), and although i had a history in math so was in the former group, and therefore can't tell you all they do, it definitely involves calculus. And my university has a very strong engineering department. That said it is really one of the top few economic departments in the country.

These threads always end up making me miss school eh

Did you bail on Pickle Barrel or what happened?

"It seems much too tainted by Politics to actually remain objective, which is a critical element of good Science."

Given the fact that you only come into contact with the pop version of economics, that view is understandable. But the economists that actually write research papers and not just write op-eds to newspapers do not start their research with a question "how do I support my political views with suitable evidence". Sure, they exist, but that applies to climatologists as well. The share is higher than it should be, especially among those that only want they bacheor's degree, but those who act this way are not those who win Nobel Prizes and develop the discipline.

Also, I make a claim that if mathematics is a science, economics must be a science as well. Much of mathematics is, how to call it, "pure" mathematics, i.e. it has no inherent connection to real world. Someone could claim that "pure" mathematics cannot be science since science requires testing against evidence gather from nature. I call bullshit. Evidence from thought experiments counts as well. If I create an imaginary world that obeys certain consistent rules, I can easily derive meaningful evidence (observations?) about the said world from those rules and shape a falsifiable theory about the world from it. This clearly follows the scientific method, since I use objective evidence to form falsifiable theories. That's how much of pure maths work and why it's maths.

Consider the example of economics. You construct an imaginary world which follows certain clear rules. You then introduce further elements to this world and observe how an agent following the preset rules interacts with it. Since you know the agent has to follow the rules, you can create a theory predicting his behaviour. Still, the theory you formulated might be proven wrong if further research shows you didn't take into account evidence that could be gathered somewhere else in your imaginary world. The process is scientific as well.

The problem is the goal of economics isn't in this basic research but in predicting he behaviour of humans. The imaginary world is thus reshaped to more closely resemble our world. Sadly, this process has serious limitations which seriously compromises the scientificness. Economics has theories for worlds with exogenous money and for those with endogenous money. But what we really want to know is whether our world has exogenous or endogenous money so that we can act accordingly. However, this can be only resolved via evidence gathered in our world - and this world doesn't obey the rules we set for our imaginary world of homo economicus. Yet our only tools are those of the imaginary world, so we pretend our real-world evidence is the imaginary world evidence and feed it into our models. This, of course, creates results that are hardly unshakably scientific - which is why it is notoriously difficult to discard economic theories. Not to mention the multitude of economic schools, some of which operate in the imaginary world with the same rules but introduce different elements into it, while others have their own imaginary worlds. This is in itself hardly problematic but again, since we do not study these worlds an sich but because we want answers to real-life questions, the bitter political fights arise. So economics is inherently schizophrenic since when it's in its most scientific form, its practical value is severely limited, while the applied economics has the highest real-life impact but is hardly scientific.

Having studied both more theoretical economics and more business economics, I can say that Lagrangians are for theoretical mathematics undergrads already in the first year. However, business economics doesn't present them at all and is content with something like integrals. Survey courses for non-economic majors omit all math altogether and just present the mainstream neokeynesian synthesis which students learn by heart. It is of course these students that are the most opinionated and vocal about their economic and consequentally political ideas. If you never tried to actually reproduce the pretty all-knowing graphs from your textbook from real-world numbers, you can live in belief that economics has answers to everything. This economic semi-literacy pisses me off big time :D

Those are all very good points, ulytau. As I prefaced, I'm not familiar with Economics beyond the mainstream talking heads, which probably don't represent the field accurately at all.

Psychology may or may not be a science, but it's certainly a horrible major.

Thanks for bringing us back on topic with that resoundingly insightful comment, Invictus.