--- Barry DeCicco <bdecicco2001 at yahoo.com> wrote: >
> From: Jim Farmelant <farmelantj at juno.com>
>
>
> >Some natural sciences are non-experimental, or
> mostly
> >non-experimental, like astronomy, geology, and
> >paleontology.
>
> >Jim F.
>
> And economics. Which is sometimes good for tripping
> up the stereotypical engineer/physical
> scientist-libertarian, who thinks of economics as
> the
> only 'real' social science.
I don't think any of them are sciences exactly. I can see why scientists would think of astronomy, geology and paleontology as scientists. A lot of the people who work in the field have a science training, and they use the by products of science. Geologists work in chemistry labs, astronomers use the byproducts of advanced theoretical physicists, etc. Somebody had a good term for it earlier on this thread which I can't remember. Anyway, they're all investigative processes. You look for evidence and then come up with a theory which explains them. No problem with this, as long as people acknowledge this and keep a wary eye out for things which disprove the currently fashionable theories.
I've often heard Economics described as a science, which seems to be based on the belief that because it uses mathematics and can be described in pseudo formalist ways it must be a science. I guess people mistake the trappings of science, for the thing itself. However economics suffers from the same problems as marxism. Sure you can falsify it's predictions when the event doesn't happen - but as the purpose is to predict what will happen this doesn't seem terribly useful (or worse because people rely on its predictions, it can make things worse).
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