>by the way, economists are generally much worse on all this than
>physicists and
>mathematicians; economists' "physics envy" (mirowski) and their insecurity
>about
>the 'scientific' soundness of their discipline leads to greater
>defensiveness on
>these matters, and a great reluctance to acknowledge the value of stuff that
>sounds too 'mushy.'
Ain't dat da troot. Michael Perelman offered some cites on the Santa Fe Institute - sorry I don't have the references at hand - which has brought together economists & physicists since the late 1980s. On first meeting, the physicists were surprised by the economists' mathematical sophistication and lack of empirical evidence, and the economists were shocked by the physicists' alleged lack of rigor. There's an anecdote about a physicist and economist arguing about the solution to some problem. They retired for the night to their respective cribs. Come morning, the physicist had an answer and the economist didn't. The physicist ran some simulations on his computer and had an answer in 5 minutes; the economist spent the night trying to work out the solution with a pencil using pure math.
It seems the economists' physics envy is misspecified.
Doug