“Economics is a social science, not a physical science.”

—  Jim Stanford

Part 1, Chapter 1, The Economy and Economics, p. 23
Economics For Everyone (2008)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Economics is a social science, not a physical science." by Jim Stanford?
Jim Stanford photo
Jim Stanford 21
Canadian economist 1961

Related quotes

Steve Keen photo

“Economics is not the Emperor of the social sciences, but the Humpty Dumpty.”

Steve Keen (1953) Australian economist

Source: Debunking Economics - The Naked Emperor Of The Social Sciences (2001), Chapter 3, The Price Of Everything And The Value Of Nothing, p. 83

Ervin László photo

“The beginning of the twentieth century witnessed the breakdown of the mechanistic theory even within physics, the science where it was the most successful… Relativity took over in field physics, and the science of quantum theory in microphysics… In view of parallel developments in physics, chemistry, biology, sociology, and economics, many branches of the contemporary sciences became… ‘sciences of organized complexity’ — that is, systems sciences.”

Ervin László (1932) Hungarian musician and philosopher

Source: The systems view of the world (1996), p. 8 as cited in: Martha C. Beck (2013) "Contemporary Systems Sciences, Implications for the Nature and Value of Religion, the Five Principles of Pancasila, and the Five Pillars of Islam," Dialogue and Universalism-E Volume 4, Number 1/2013. p. 3 ( online http://www.emporia.edu/~cbrown/dnue/documents/vol04.no01.2013/Vol04.01.Beck.pdf).

James D. Watson photo

“There is only one science, physics: everything else is social work.”

James D. Watson (1928) American molecular biologist, geneticist, and zoologist.

As quoted in Lifelines http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/r/rose-lifelines.html (1997) by Steven Rose

Vannevar Bush photo

“Science, by itself, provides no panacea for individual, social, and economic ills.”

Vannevar Bush (1890–1974) American electrical engineer and science administrator

Science - The Endless Frontier (1945)
Context: Science, by itself, provides no panacea for individual, social, and economic ills. It can be effective in the national welfare only as a member of a team, whether the conditions be peace or war. But without scientific progress no amount of achievement in other directions can insure our health, prosperity, and security as a nation in the modern world.

George Will photo

“When a politician, on a subject implicating science — hard science, economic science, social science — says, ‘The debate is over,’ you may be sure of two things. It’s that the debate is raging and he’s losing it.”

George Will (1941) American newspaper columnist, journalist, and author

Discussion, Fox News Sunday, February 16, 2014
2010s

Russell L. Ackoff photo

“Out of this basic language, we build up the other languages of the sciences, beginning with the language of physics, and proceeding to biology, psychology, and the social sciences.”

Russell L. Ackoff (1919–2009) Scientist

Charles West Churchman, Russell Lincoln Ackoff (1950) Methods of inquiry: an introduction to philosophy and scientific method. p. 185; Partly cited in: Britton, G. A., & McCallion, H. (1994). An overview of the Singer/Churchman/Ackoff school of thought. Systems Practice, Vol 7 (5), 487-521.
1950s
Context: … All other languages can be translated into the thing-language, but the thing-language cannot be translated into any other language. Its terms can only be reduced to what are called "ostensive" definitions. These consist merely of pointing or otherwise evoking a direct experience. Hence, the thing-language is absolutely basic. Out of this basic language, we build up the other languages of the sciences, beginning with the language of physics, and proceeding to biology, psychology, and the social sciences.

“We suffer a great deal today from the bogus certainties and precisions of the pseudo-sciences which include all the social sciences including economics.”

John James Cowperthwaite (1915–2006) British colonial administrator

March 27, 1968, page 213.
Official Report of Proceedings of the Hong Kong Legislative Council
Context: But what I really believe is that both he and Mr Wong are innocently guilty of the twentieth century fallacy that technology can be applied to the conduct of human affairs. They cannot believe that anything can work efficiently unless it has been programmed by a computer and have lost faith in the forces of the market and the human actions and reactions that make it up. But no computer has yet been devised which will produce accurate results from a diet of opinion and emotion. We suffer a great deal today from the bogus certainties and precisions of the pseudo-sciences which include all the social sciences including economics. An article I recently read referred to the academic’s “infernal economic arithmetic which ignores human responses”. Technology is admirable on the factory floor but largely irrelevant to human affairs.

“Unlike the members of the physical and biological sciences, the economist is asked to explain his work in a manner that is interesting and convincing to a weary listener. Yet there is no reason to believe that the explanation of our economic and social world is inherently simpler than the explanation of our physical world.”

George Stigler (1911–1991) American economist

"George J. Stigler - Banquet Speech," 1982

Bertrand Russell photo

“The fundamental concept in social science is Power, in the same sense in which Energy is the fundamental concept in physics.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Source: 1930s, Power: A New Social Analysis (1938), Ch. 1: The Impulse to Power

Greta Thunberg photo

“Unite behind the science, that is our demand. (Thunberg told a plenary session of the European Economic and Social Committee”

Greta Thunberg (2003) Swedish climate change activist

EESC
Kicking Ass for Her Generation': Applause for 16-Year-Old Greta Thunberg as EU Chief Pledges $1 Trillion to Curb Climate Threat, Julia Conley, https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/02/21/kicking-ass-her-generation-applause-16-year-old-greta-thunberg-eu-chief-pledges-1Common Dreams (21 February 2019)
2019

Related topics