July 12, 2013

Opinion vs Knowledge

Comment on Edward Fullbrook on 'Dr. X'

Blog-Reference

Campaigning for a good cause, whatever it is, is politics. Politics is the opposite of science. As one can glean from the history of Political Economy, the good/bad discussion has achieved nothing of scientific value and only hampered the true/false discussion of theoretical economics. This is why economics is still at the pre-scientific stage: “The position I now favor is that economics is a pre-science, rather like astronomy before Copernicus, Brahe and Galileo. I still hold out hope of better behavior in the future, but given the travesties of logic and anti-empiricism that have been committed in its name, it would be an insult to the other sciences to give economics even a tentative membership of that field.” (Keen, 2011, p. 158)

The bad scientist cranks out opinions, and the good scientist contributes to knowledge.

Egmont Kakarot-Handtke


References
Keen, S. (2011). Debunking Economics. London, New York: Zed Books, rev. edition.