I’m an Electrical Engineer. I design radios for cell phones.
So if Economics cannot be scientific then would you say that Psychology is not a science? It is the study of human behavior. When I studied it they called it a science.
In its modern usage, yes. However, excessive dependence on the so-called scientific method has led some like Popper to exclude substantial parts of biology (e.g. Darwinian theory of evolution) from being science because they do not fit into this straightjacket. The ancients certainly included knowledge regarding first principles as part of science (the “demonstrables”) and I think the tendency persisted up until positivism. Why the positivist fetish of restricting science to a particular model of acquiring knowledge should be accepted is beyond me, especially since science simply does mean knowledge, or more appositely certain procedures of acquiring it - why should only one be thought of as conducive to truth, to the exclusion of all others? Different domains of inquiry merit different approaches. Again, the writings of Kuhn and Feyerabend are good therapeutics in this case.
Didn’t Hayek touch on this subject in the Counter Revolution of Science? First part I believe, he explains the difference between science and Science as came about in the 19th Century. All areas of the social or moral sciences are unScientific, in the strict sense. That is hardly a condemnation, however there is a lot of baggage that can be smuggled in with such an assertion.
Does anyone have any links detailing Austrians predicting things throughout the 20th century? I remember reading somewhere that Mises himself predicted the Great Depression. What about stagflation? What about the price of gold after the dollar was unpegged from it? What about the S&L crisis, etc?
I’m just trying to get a feel for this aspect of it all.
Mises predicted the great depression.
Austrians predicted the 2009 depression. Peter Schiff is the most popular Austrian follower that said it would happen while the Keynesians all laughed at him.
Reading Rothbard’s “America’s Great Depression” and reading about how/why it happened is like reading a diary explaining what happened in 2002-2007, eventhough his book was written in the 1960’s. Anyone who subscribes to the Austrian theory of the trade cycle could see this bust, the S&L and the 1929 great depression could see it coming from miles away. Keynesians and Monetarists couldn’t. In 1920’s the advances in production and technology should have naturally made consumer prices fall (not deflation) but because the Fed inflated the money supply it kept prices stable. Monetarists perceived this as a healthy economy with no inflation. Keynesians were lost for words and didn’t know if the gov’t should raise taxes (take away money to cool inflation) or increase deficit spending (to support prices) because they didn’t see any problem until after the bust and deflation began. Austrians however saw the inflation in the money supply and knew a bust was inevitable, eventhough there was increased productivity and savings.
Do you have any links that clearly demonstrate that they saw it coming from a mile away?
Also, quick question that is somewhat unrelated to this: What was Rothbard’s view on utility theory exactly? I’ve heard people claim he threw it out because he thought it imposed cardinality and that he was wrong for this.
(sorry, just didn’t want to start a whole new thread for this and nothing seemed to come up fruitful with the search function.)
No, he did claim to reconstruct it though. What you must mean are indifference curves. There’s a lot of work on this by Hoppe, Block, Hulsmann (some in response to Caplan) &c. which I’ve not yet read but which you should if the topic interests you, as well as Rothbard’s original paper on utility and welfare economics.
Thanks Jon.
Where can I find these at?
On the Mises website, just search for them (or indifference analysis/curves.) I’m pretty sure Inquisitor included them on the Praxeology reading list in the economics section, though.
Ok thanks. I will try that.
For some reason I never seem to have much luck with the search function, idk why.
It brings up the forum posts, which is a nuissance. It used to work quite well. If you can’t find them, I’ll probably post them up a bit later. If you do, just link to them in here.
So you would call mathematics a social theory? Both inductive and deductive reasoning belong to science, which Merriam-Webster describes as:
a department of systematized knowledge as an object of study <the science of theology>
I do not care if Austrian economics is scientific or not. I would think it is not. But neither is philosophy. But the sciences are all branches of philosophy. What Austrian economics most certainly is, is logical.
that’s true, if everyone was a rationalist there would be a different term for strict science than there is for a general inquiry into human understanding of the world.
obviously pure induction is useless in figuring out what kind of experiemnts to try out, where to try next etc. Inutitionist, and deductive logic play a large role in that.
I don’t claim that you can’t derive useful predictions about the world using deductive methods, just that it isn’t strictly scientific. What you get when you use deduction is strong correlations. They can be so strong that you say “it is extremely unlikely that this is not causation”. Though you can never be sure.
Well not even a rationalist, just an anti-modernist (in the philosophical sense of the word), but my point is that that is a very restricted, relatively modern usage of the term “scientific”. If you want to restrict science to mean what goes on in physics (and not what the positivists claim goes on there), that’s fine, I just find it peculiar and quirkish.
Ok guys I’m still having this debate with this guy and he mentions most people have a sigmoidal utility function on money as evidence that mathematical models don’t fail when it comes to human values (which I claimed were subjective).
Wtf is he even talking about?
Ask him if he knows of anyone who uses calculus on a mintue-ly basis.
Knowing him, he will probably say he does.
He is an egotistical self-righteous asshat like that. He thinks because the recently decided he was going to switch his major to economics and he read a book or two about it that he knows more than anyone concerning them.
It doesn’t matter if he does it, it matters if everyone does it. So does everyone use mathematical functions instantaneously to evaluate their money?