Is Economics a Science or a Religion?

[xchrom]

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-07-17/is-economics-a-science-or-a-religion-.html

Is economics a science or a religion? Its practitioners like to think of it as akin to the former. The blind faith with which many do so suggests it has become too much like the latter, with potentially dire consequences for the real people the discipline is intended to help.

The idea of economics as religion harks back to at least 2001, when economist Robert Nelson published a book on the subject. Nelson argued that the policy advice economists draw from their theories is never “value-neutral” but foists their values, dressed up to look like objective science, on the rest of us.

Take, for example, free trade. In judging its desirability, economists weigh projected costs and benefits, an approach that superficially seems objective. Yet economists decide what enters the analysis and what gets ignored. Such things as savings in wages or transport lend themselves easily to measurement in monetary terms, while others, such as the social disruption of a community, do not. The mathematical calculations give the analysis a scientific wrapping, even when the content is just an expression of values.

Similar biases influence policy considerations on everything from labor laws to climate change. As Nelson put it, “the priesthood of a modern secular religion of economic progress” has pushed a narrow vision of economic “efficiency,” wholly undeterred by a history of disastrous outcomes.

[Laelth]

1. In many ways, science, itself, is a religion.

Thus, asking whether economics (a science) is a religion, is the same as asking whether a religion (science) is a religion. This is, in rhetorical terms, begging the question.

To the extent that economics is a science, one could argue, economics must be a religion because science, itself, is a religion (albeit a highly useful religion and the dominant religion of our time).

Or, so one might argue.



-Laelth

[GeorgeGist]

5. Tripe.

[Laelth]

7. Most people who are deeply invested in the religion of science ...

... refuse to see it as a religion.

That, in fact, is the way you can tell which religion is dominant at a given historical moment. Its adherents refuse to accept the "religion" label being attached to their deeply-held belief system. Or, so Nietzsche argued.

-Laelth

[progressoid]

15. Nope.

Science is not a deeply-help belief system.

There is no religion of science.

Nietzsche is dead.

[Laelth]

17. Hilarious post. Thanks for the laugh. n/t

-Laelth

[Xyzse]

20. This is a bit odd due to a few things

Sometimes I find that can be of two ways.

-Those who consider science a religion doesn't know science.
-Those that accuse actual practitioners of science considering it a religion does not know science.

Science is not the scientifict facts and figures given. Science is a process and method. It is a system of testing to see if a hypothesis stands up to that which would poke holes in it.

Which is why a true practitioner of science can hold on to a point of view in how something works for a number of years and hold on to it passionately; only to discard it and look for another venue of research as soon as it has been proven wrong.

Science allows for the ability to test the world around, and have the humility to accept that their inner most held beliefs at how things work can be rendered obsolete in an instant.

I guess, it can be argued that the religion of science is that they believe the method of testing works.

[Laelth]

22. Cool. See post #11, below, for some sense of where I am coming from on this issue.

If you're interested.

-Laelth

[Xyzse]

27. Just read it

I can see where you're coming from, but I guess my view of what science is, is the method, not the explanations.

That there is scientific theories and scientific facts, that they are subject to change and can be disproven at any given point, where they are the explanations of how the world works not as something to be looked at with absolute belief.

[Laelth]

30. Yes, but what makes science a "religion" is its "faith" in its method.

It's not the "facts" propounded by scientists that make science a religion, it is the faith that the method leads to "truth" that makes science a religion.

Or so this theory would argue.

-Laelth

[Xyzse]

36. Agreed, that is why I mentioned

"I guess, it can be argued that the religion of science is that they believe the method of testing works."

Must state though, that the scientific method has changed a bit too. So even that changes a bit as we learn more.

Thing is, with the method anything that ends up being called "truth" then becomes not science.

The method tends to imply that whatever is found is not "truth" but the current explanation of how things work.

Still, I must admit, I can be part of that belief system that using the method "may" lead to "truth", even if we don't know that it is FINALLY the "truth", since the method exists to poke holes on it.

[Laelth]

39. I share your feelings.

As I said above, I am a devotee of the religion of science.

That said, I think it's useful to see science as a religion so that we can "objectively" (if you will) assess its strengths and weaknesses.

Thanks for the response.

-Laelth

[Xyzse]

43. To tell the truth, I don't really care to label it

I consider science a tool for figuring things out. ((In keeping with the subject in the topic, it can even be used to come up with economic theories and a pathway to prove it))

I just feel that it confuses the issue for people who don't understand seem to understand what science is for, and that it can co-exist with other beliefs. That the method is a tool that any one can use.

I mean, there are also people that believe that whatever is found proven once through the scientific method as canon "truth", and those I tend to consider as people who don't understand what science is.

If people want to label it as a religion, fine, I just feel it may be a slippery slope that would allow some idiots to argue that "Since you consider science a religion, we should be able to teach our religion to children, and promote creationism and so forth."

[longship]

37. That so-called "faith" in the method is backed up...

by centuries of success and the evolution of those very methods. Part of science's elegance is the ability to change in the face of disconfirming evidence.

Equating science with religion is a mere rhetorical device employed by people who either do not understand it, or are hostile to it for some reason. Certainly such a claim is common when one has an agenda or an ideology that is counter to what science has informed us.

That's why scientists do not take such claims seriously.

[Laelth]

40. Science is a great religion.

It is, one could argue, Western Civilization's greatest gift to the world. It is a very powerful religion that has allowed us to create a lot of technology. Whether that technology has been beneficial is another question, altogether.

I find your last sentence in the post above amusing. Only a High Priest of the dominant religion of a culture has the power to "not take such claims seriously." The hubris of that statement actually proves Nietzsche's point.

Thanks for the response.

-Laelth

[longship]

42. To be honest.

I find calling science a religion to be an odious mischaracterization of both science and religion.

Sorry, my friend. I cannot go down that path with you. I respectfully disagree with your position.

[Laelth]

49. Fair enough. I will not press the comparison.

I will merely state that it is very useful to me to see science as a religion. It makes me vastly more tolerant of other people's religions (as a devotee of science, myself), and it helps me to see the inherent weaknesses in my own religion, science.

YMMV.

-Laelth

[longship]

53. This is the kind of respectful disagreement that makes DU a great place.

Skäl!

[Laelth]

55. Agreed.

On both points. Respectful disagreement is rare, and DU has a good number of posters that can do it (not all, mind you, but a very high percentage).

-Laelth

[byeya]

44. There is NO religion of science. Science is something you do; you tell others what you did and

how you did it; you reveal your methodology; and see if your results are challenged or accepted.
Science is self correcting because of this.

Religion is top down rigid BS with big chiefs at the top and believers at the bottom.

[Laelth]

45. As if high school students have the power to argue with a science textbook.

Honestly, it sounds the same to me. Top-down "High Priests" of science (textbook authors) "teach" their creed to low-level, uneducated peons who have neither the power nor the authority to question what the "higher-ups" have dictated to be the truth. Sounds very much like a religion (and there's nothing wrong with that).

Do you think there are no doctrinal squabbles in the Catholic Church's College of Cardinals? Of course, there are, just as there are theoretical/doctrinal squabbles among the high priests of science. Science, just like the Catholic Church, has a top-down, hierarchical, and feudal structure. Those of us who are not scientists are left to merely to "believe" what our betters tell us to be the truth.

Does this comparison not ring true, at least a little?

-Laelth

[byeya]

48. OK, in the spirit of give and take and general comity, How about this? Kids in high school first

have to learn what science is before they can practice what sciencists do. My saying that there's a lot of competition in science - for instant fame have someone disprove evolution or what's left of Einstein's laws - does not mean that genuine scientific discoveries or insights are not ignored. Example: the Australian who spent years saying stomach ulcers were caused by a bacterium was ignored because everyone knew ulcers were caused by "stress" even though proles got ulcers more than CEOs and other high factotums. There's also the occurance in a field I am familiar with, the study of Brophytes, where a "discovery" which years later turns out to be incorrect, it now challenged because there may be 6 people in the world at one time who care about the subject.

Now the RC church is certainly hierarchical and there are internal - usually secret - debates about arcane doctrinal subjects. If it becomes enough of a problem either the Pope decides or the losers get to work in a leper hospital. The veneration of Mary was a spontaneous grassroots movement that the RC church tried mightily to suppress. It took 800 years but Mary made the grade.

I admit that there's a big difference between small science and big science. A guy looking for liverworts and how their oil bodies are structured is small science; CERN is big science. Where money is involved, or political power in the cases of Lysenko and others like him, then there can be politically directed areas where money flows and where no one goes.

But day in and day out, science is open and self correcting and there is no Pope of science.

Thanks for your post.

[Laelth]

47. Allow me to add that other religions are self-correcting as well.

The Catholic Church once "believed" that the sun revolved around the Earth. They changed that doctrine, eventually. Just like Science, Catholicism can and does change its doctrines when circumstances demand it.

-Laelth

[hfojvt]

33. don't you mean

HERESY!!!!

[Laelth]

34. Spot on.

Yes, whether the poster knows it or not, that IS the exact impulse that drove the poster's response.

Cheers!

-Laelth

[AngryAmish]

9. Science is just another form of philosophy

It happens to be the form of philosophy which presents the reality of the universe into our consciousness the best in my opinion. It allows itself top be wrong, be proved wrong.

Economics is...pretty useless. A lot of it is untested. Much of it is not amenable to be proven untruthful.

The problem of any form of philosophy is that we are not rational creatures. Our brains act in certain, often predicable ways. Things we take as true merely means that our brains have decided that they are true. And once our brains have decided that something is true it hurts to have to decide something else in fact is true. Science and the culture of science actually make a discovery that reality is not how we thought it was not hurt so much but actually pleasurable.

I am not explaining myself very well. But until we know the nature of consciousness then many things we take as true is in fact nonsense.

[Laelth]

11. Excellent post.

I don't disagree with your assessment. I, myself, am a devotee of the religion of science, but my devotion does not mean that science is not a religion.

Philosophy (as propounded by Plato), is the basis of Western science as it relies on key assumptions that it shares with science, to wit: 1) there is an objective reality; 2) said reality can be known; 3) said reality can be communicated, and 4) understanding of said reality can then be used as a tool for changing the world (i.e. technology).

This "philosophical" position is directly contrary to what the rhetoricians of Ancient Greece were arguing, said sentiments best expressed by Gorgias of Leontini in his trilemma, to wit: 1) there is no "truth;" 2) even if there were "truth," it could not be understood by humans; and 3) even if there were "truth" that could be understood, it could not be communicated.

This dispute (between rhetoricians and philosophers) is at the heart of Western thinking and is essential to our understanding of Western civilization.

-Laelth

[hfojvt]

35. actually economics is very useful

I am not sure who said it, but economics, especially mainstream economics, has been called "a system of apologetics for the status quo".

That is, it is useful for getting the oppressed to accept their oppression.

And wasn't your break over 15 seconds ago?

Get back to work!!

edit

Q: Why are my wages so low?
A: supply and demand

Q: Why are your wages so high?
A: supply and demand

Q: Why are you such a greedy pig?
A: Don't worry about it. My selfishness and greed benefits the whole world, as if by an invisible hand.

Q: Why don't we tax the rich and create public goods and good jobs.
A: Oooh, be very careful. If you mess with the free market, the invisible hand will slap you silly.

And so on.

[Apophis]

50. There is nothing religious about science.

Science actually does something.

[Laelth]

51. LOL. As if Catholicism has never done anything!

Ever heard of the counter-reformation? The Spanish Inquisition? I can assure you that religions are powerful, and they all do something ... just like science.

-Laelth

[Apophis]

52. Something useful*

[Laelth]

56. LOL. Good point.

On the other hand, I credit Catholicism with preserving classical culture during the Dark Ages. I credit Catholicism with preserving Western Civilization through its insistence upon a common, Western language, i.e. Latin. I credit Catholicism for its sporadic efforts to preserve liberalism as Western Civilization has evolved (Pauline Christianity is beautiful, in its own way ... Sermon on the Mount, etc.). I also credit Catholicism for its ministry to the poor and the least-powerful among us for a long, long time (though many individual Catholics have abused this ministry and/or failed to live up to the dictates of Christ's message).

All religions have pluses and minuses. As I said to a poster below, it is very useful to me to see science as a religion. It makes me vastly more tolerant of other people's religions (as a devotee of science, myself), and it helps me to see the inherent weaknesses in my own religion, science.

YMMV.

-Laelth

[byeya]

2. Monitarism, in another name. was tried and failed before, during, and years after the Great

Depression. The theories of Keynes were tried during the Great Depression. The former has failed in all cases and Keynes has succeeded. So why are there still monitarists, or Hayak/Friedman followers, or, another name, free marketeers? Because economics, unlike a real science, is not self correcting.

[AllINeedIsCoffee]

3. A lot of trial and error in which error usually leads the way. nt

[GeorgeGist]

4. Neither.

[JVS]

6. It's a social science that is very much corrupted by political and business interests.

[warrant46]

8. Economics is a philosophy

That cannot be proven by standard empirical means. The result of which is always "fudged" by the inputs.

[Egalitarian Thug]

10. An art that has been promoted to a religion, IMO.

It's trying to become a science, but its development is hindered by the majority of its practitioners replacing examination/study with belief.

[FarCenter]

12. It is a philosophy, rather than a religion, since it does not presuppose a god.

Whether it is a science depends on the branch of the field of economics. Parts of microeconomics are pretty scientific.

Parts of macroeconomics are still very like the now obsolete field of political economy, which originated in moral philosophy. It attempts to be an observational science, but is pretty far from it.

Economics as bandied about by the media and by politicians is not actually economics.

[KittyWampus]

13. Human psychology (individual and crowd) play a large role in economics. Will read later.

[markiv]

14. neither, it's an art nt

[CK_John]

16. Neither, money is a concept, if you have it you understand the concept. If you don't have it

you shouldn't worry about it, it's never going to be on your bucket list.

Money also starts at 7 or more digits.

[Ratty]

18. Anything can be a religion

When you hold so firmly to your assumptions and preconceptions that you refuse to see what's right in front of your nose.

[1-Old-Man]

19. A Priest, a Research Biologist, and an Economist walk into a bar

The difference between the Priest and the other two is that the other two need a knowledge of mathmatics to do their job. All the Priest needs is a catchy story and some fool who will believe it.

[bvar22]

21. NeoLiberal "Free Market" Economics is certainly a RELIGION.

This new religion demands absolute Blind Faith Devotion to an invisible Deity for which
no concrete evidence exists.
In fact, all real world evidence contradicts the existence of this new deity, yet our leadership uses this deity to justify Economic Policy that negatively affects Billions of people,
but enhances the fortunes of the privileged handful who sit on the gilded thrones of the 1%.




[font size=4]The Graven Image on the altar
of the new Church of the Invisible Hand.[/font]

Sorry, Virginia,
but there is NO Invisible Hand,
and no such thing as "Free Trade" or "Free Markets".
Like other religions with invisible deities,
this new religion is a SCAM invented by The RICH to get more money for themselves,
and sold to the gullible by Smooth Talking Con Men.

[leftstreet]

26. +1

[Xyzse]

23. Economics I'd have to say has both parts

Meaning:

There are systems that allow economic policy to be hypothesized, tested and then promoted with some degree of error.

It can also be a religion since there are sub-groups that people call Keynesian Economics which I know quite a few promote.
It also becomes almost like a religious belief as people still believe in the Trickle Down Economics which have been proven to be erroneous. People believe it despite of the evidence on the contrary.

I must state, that just because Nelson states that theories are made up values merely shows to me that they are using the scientific method improperly and can be improved.

Economics has so many different variables that they have to pick and choose which ones to concentrate on. Hence theory is placed up for the world to see for it to be tested. Unfortunately, testing of such theory wreaks havoc in reality. They need to formulate theories better, which is possibly why it can be considered religion since there are just some theories/beliefs that would not die down, because they can just take any value from different sources to support whatever theory they have. THAT IS SLOPPY SCIENCE and maybe shouldn't be called science even if they go through the scientific method's steps.

All in all, I just wasted my time talking in a loop.

[Fumesucker]

24. Yes n/t

[Blue_Tires]

25. I'd say it's more of a hustle

[leveymg]

28. It's a shared belief system dressed up in an obscure mathematical language that few understand

and various sects and followers disagree about.

"Religion" works.

[FarCenter]

31. "shared belief system" works better than "religion"

Equating the two would mean that mathematics is a religion, since mathematics requires certain fundamental things to be believed without proof.

That would expand the meaning of "religion" to an unreasonable extent.

Religion usually involves belief in supernatural being(s) and/or a supernatural soul and/or life after death, none of which are part of economics.

[on point]

29. Science. But some ideologues stop at what supports their beliefs

[hfojvt]

32. I read and own Nelson's book

interesting book, but I am interested in economics, having an MA in the subject and a minor in my BA.

But the idea of scoffing at the notion that economics is a science certainly pre-dates Nelson's book.

And as for religion, economics would be a bunch of competing religions, although the mainstream has considerable academic power (logically enough in many ways).

But it was the great economics Joan Robinson who say "the primary reason for learning economics, is so that you won't be fooled by economists"

[GliderGuider]

38. It's the endocrine system of our cybernetic exoskeleton

The Dawn of Cybernetic Civilization

[1-Old-Man]

41. Economics is the study of the flow of resources, Religion is mystic hucksterism.

There really is quite a difference. Economics strives to explain, Religion strives to control through superstition, ignorance, and fear. Economics welcomes examination, contemplation, and fact based conclusions, three things that are the death of Religion. They are quite different things and to an extent mutually exclusive.

[KamaAina]

46. Like any science, economics is based on assumptions

but unlike others (mathematics, say) the assumptions are fluid. You can get the graphs and pie charts to say pretty much whatever you want them to say by tweaking the assumptions behind them. Garbage in, garbage out.

[Avalux]

54. I'm going to pick neither.

I agree with the article, in that the fundamentals of economics may be considered scientific (fact based), but predicting future outcomes gets tricky. It's completely different than a controlled scientific experiment.

I would call the biases, or unpredictable influences, a social phenomenon, not religious.

[haele]

57. Econimics is a scientific Art in the classical sense. A "soft science".

Because it uses math and statistical models to create theories and develop proofs, people tend to think of Economics as a science.

But honestly, it's as much a science as sociology and anthropology is; there is no unfalsifiable "truth" or physical law that dictates any particular method in which social or cultural constructs such as economics and communities work. What may be statistically true in one century may not be true the next. Macro-economics works differently than Micro-economics; personal household, business/corporate, local communities, state, federal, global economies all work differently dependent on the culture, opportunities, and situations those entities find themselves operating in.

To Thomas Friedman, global economics works one way. To the head of the WWW, it works another. Gangster, er, Ogligarch economies are different than Communial/Socialist economies. And even then, there is no "one oligarch economy" or "one socialist economy", just as there is no "economy for the wealthy" or "economy for the poor". From Apple to China, to Seattle, to Amsterdam, to Wichita, to Quito, to Wells, to a convenience store in Watts, to an unemployed steelworker in Janestown, female head of household in Mali, or grad student in Bangalore - economic practices and realities are Arts that are honed through experimentation and practice.

Haele