Consequences of Computational Limits

Abstract

It might seem odd that an economist would write a critique of a materialist approach to his field. After all, of the many areas of social inquiry, economics is the most concerned with the activities and institutions that influence the material aspects of human culture: the standard of living, production, investment, innovation, consumption, prices, and markets. In addition, more than any of the other social sciences, economics has emulated the natural sciences in adopting mathematical modeling as the standard format for its discourse (at least in academic circles). The scientific method is empirical and model-based. In economics, optimization and maximization principles have served to provide the restrictions that narrow the range of what allegedly can happen, leading to predictions that are testable and hypotheses that can be falsified.