Abstract
I address here the reverse and more general question: “Can economics afford not to become a natural science?”. I argue that epistemologically economics can only belong to, and join eventually, the natural sciences, avoiding its charming literary proses on history of mankind employing seemingly scientific postures.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
B.K. Chakrabarti, in Encyclopedia of Philosophy and the Social Sciences, edited by B. Kaldis (Sage Publications, Los Angeles, 2013), Vol. 1, pp. 229–230
B.K. Chakrabarti, A. Chakraborti, S.R. Chakravarty, A. Chatterjee, Econophysics of Income and Wealth Distributions (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2013)
A. Chakraborti, D. Challet, A. Chatterjee, M. Marsili, Y.-C. Zhang, B.K. Chakrabarti, Phys. Rep. 552, 1 (2015)
A. Comte, Social Physics: From the Positive Philosophy of Auguste Comte (Calvin Blanchard, New York, 1856)
Editorial Note (2016), The Economist, March 5th, 2016
S. Galam, Sociophysics: A Physicist's Modeling of Psycho-polotical Phenomena (Springer, Heidelberg, 2012)
S. Galam, Y. Gefen, Y. Shapir, Mathematical J. Sociology 9, 1 (1982)
G.C. Harcourt, P. Kriesler (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Post-Keynesian Economics, Vol. 2 (Critiques and Methodology) (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2013)
J.A. Hertz, A.S. Krogh, R.G. Palmer, Introduction to the Theory of Neural Computation, Santa Fe Institute Series (Westview Press, Colorado, 1991)
J.M. Keynes, General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (Palgrave Macmillan, London, 1936)
A. Kirman, Complex Economics (Routledge, New York, 2010)
G.T. Kneebone, Mathematical Logic and the Foundations of Mathematics: An Introductory Survey (Dover Publications, New York, 2001)
T. Lux, F. Westerhoff, Nature Phys. 5, 2 (1999)
R.N. Mantegna, H.E. Stanley, Nature 376, 46 (1995)
R.N. Mantegna, H.E. Stanley, An Introduction to Econophysics: Correlations and Complexity in Finance (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1999)
J. Rosser, Jr., The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics, edited by S.N. Durlauf, L.E. Blume (Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 2008), Vol. 2, pp. 729–732
B. Russell, The Problems of Philosophy (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1967)
R.M. Solow, Am. Econ. Rev. (American Economic Association) 75, 328 (1985)
T.C. Schelling, J. Math. Sociology 1, 143 (1971)
M. Shubik, E. Smith, The Guidance of an Enterprise Economy (MIT Press, Cambridge MA, 2016)
H.E. Stanley, Interview by K. Gangopadhyay, in IIM Kozhikode Society and Management Review (Sage Publications, 2013), Vol. 2, pp. 73–78
D. Stauffer, S.M. de Oliveira, P.M.C. de Oliveira, J.S. de Simoes Martins, Biology, Sociology, Geology by Computational Physicists (Elsevier, Amsterdam, 2006)
M. Twain, Life on the Mississippi (Chatto and Windus, London, 1883)
J.O. Weatheral, Fisics and Phynance, APS News (American Physical Society) 22 (2013)
A.N. Whitehead, B. Russell, Principia Mathematica, Vols. I, II, III, (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1910, 1912, 1913)
S. Wolfram, A New Kind of Science (Wolfram Media, Illinois, 2002)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Chakrabarti, B.K. Can economics afford not to become natural science?. Eur. Phys. J. Spec. Top. 225, 3121–3125 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1140/epjst/e2016-60103-8
Received:
Revised:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1140/epjst/e2016-60103-8