Jag Bhalla writes a post entitled Is Economics More Like History Than Physics? If we are talking about macroeconomics, then I would say yes. That is a major theme of the book I am working on. Bhalla writes,
Steven Pinker says, “No sane thinker would try to explain World War I in the language of physics.” Yet some economists aim close to such craziness.
Pinker says the ”mindset of science” eliminates errors by “open debate, peer review, and double-blind methods,” and especially, experimentation. But experiments require repetition and control over all relevant variables. We can experiment on individual behavior, but not with history or macroeconomics.
Pointer from Mark Thoma.
I am not sure I agree fully. To be sure, since WWI only occurred once, there is no way to study it as a (repeatable) experiment. But I do not think it is hopeless to apply scientific principles to the study of such events (or macro). A big empirical challenge here (and in time series in general) is observational equivalence. Researchers have to be honest about the difficulty of fitting a specific model (as above) to the data.
”…explain World War I” is also a straw man, I think. Researchers usually ask very specific, narrow questions. This can be done with WWI and other major events.
Pinker writes:
“Diagnoses of the malaise of the humanities rightly point to anti-intellectual trends in our culture and to the commercialization of our universities. But an honest appraisal would have to acknowledge that some of the damage is self-inflicted. The humanities have yet to recover from the disaster of postmodernism, with its defiant obscurantism, dogmatic relativism, and suffocating political correctness.”
Isn’t the obscurantism, relativism and political correctness part of what people are referring to when they talk about scientism? Putting a scientific veneer on what is basically identity politics, psuedo-propaganda, etc?