Economics as a discipline is ultimately a form of humanistic understanding. The ideal of scientific rigor is certainly laudable, but it is nonetheless an ideal for the discipline in general. One of the two forms of understanding, humanistic and scientific, is not better than the other. But they require different questions and, as a result, often lead to different answers through different methods, one of which is interpretation, or, understanding the use and uses of something within a constellation of rules and history. Economics, in general, works, but we must be sure of the particular ways it works.
The discipline raises the questions of philosophy of mathematics and logic (and thus we should say language). How do mathematical models relate to the world? Is it the Tractatus, or Philosophical Investigations?
I wonder if economics students are ever assigned readings of Ludwig Wittgenstein. The latter part of Ray Monk's biography on him touches on many hilarious debates between him and his students, including Alan Turing, around these questions.
When you're attempting social engineering, one form is better than the other.
If your predictions consistently fail, you're not doing good science.
If you want to claim you're not doing science at all but standup comedy or literature, that's fine.
But that's not how economics is presented to the public. It's always "We must do [unpopular thing] to get [defined outcome] because [economics is truth]."
If there's no empirical basis for any of that, the entire narrative is plain political fraud.
>If your predictions consistently fail, you're not doing good science.
I agree with where you're going, but I think the better phrasing would be "If your predictions consistently fail, your scientific theory isn't very good"
Good science usually involves a lot of failure before it provides good theory.
This doesn't excuse incredible overselling of economic models by economists though.
> The ideal of scientific rigor is certainly laudable
There is no scientific rigor so there is nothing to laud. Economics is on the same level as astrology in that "math" is used to gain the appearance and legitimacy of "science".
> The discipline raises the questions of philosophy of mathematics and logic (and thus we should say language). How do mathematical models relate to the world? Is it the Tractatus, or Philosophical Investigations?
The problem has nothing to do with mathematical models. It has to do with testability and reproducibility.
There was a time when astronomy was only a component of astrology, and astrophysics/cosmology is what happened when science-minded astrologers figured out the whole thing couldn't work because their attempts to make ever more accurate "predictions" (soothsaying) based on ever more accurate predictions (of the positions of celestial bodies) told them the universe was arranged just a little bit differently than they'd supposed. What is now purely pseudoscience was once a proto-science; the woo was still woo, but there was actual science there as well.
The discipline raises the questions of philosophy of mathematics and logic (and thus we should say language). How do mathematical models relate to the world? Is it the Tractatus, or Philosophical Investigations?
I wonder if economics students are ever assigned readings of Ludwig Wittgenstein. The latter part of Ray Monk's biography on him touches on many hilarious debates between him and his students, including Alan Turing, around these questions.