The great debate continues. What is becoming obvious, or should be becoming obvious, is that the problem with mainstream economic modeling is the presumption of a natural order inherited from the 18th century worldview and the metaphysics and epistemology on which it is based. In the 19th century scientists began to abandon this worldview and the metaphysical epistemological presumptions on which it is based, and the early 20th century buried it.
However, even Albert Einstein refused to believe that "God plays dice," which is a near perfect expression of the natural order position. He could not accept the notion of a probabilistic world due to what behavioral psychologists now call anchoring bias, one of the strongest and most prevalent of the many cognitive biases, along with confirmation bias. Modern marketing and advertising are largely based on anchoring. Even great scientists are susceptible to cognitive biases.
Rather than natural order, contemporary social scientists take behavior as the basis of behavioral science. Increasingly, behavior is being explained in terms of cognitive science. This is looked at within the overall framework of evolutionary science.
Read it at Lars P. Syll's Blog
Gods and idiots may share Wren-Lewis model, but it certainly isn’t my model!
by Lars P. Syll | Professor, Malmo University
Also see Lars, Economics quote of the century — an extremely embarrassing quote of Robert Lucas in 2003. It, too, is based on a natural order presumption. It amplifies on "idiots" in the title of Lars's post, "Gods and idiots may share Wren-Lewis model...."
