Welcome to Econ Talk, part of the Library of Economics and Liberty. I'm your host Russ Roberts

of George Mason University and Stanford University's Hoover Institution. Our website is econtalk.org

where you can subscribe, find other episodes, comment on this podcast, and find links to

other information related to today's conversation. Our email address is mail at econtalk.org. We'd

love to hear from you. Today is September 19th, 2011, and my guest is Alex Rosenberg. The

art Taylor Cole, Professor of Philosophy at Duke University. Alex, welcome to Econ Talk.

Thanks. It's great to be with you, Russ. In 1994, in an essay titled, If Economics

isn't a science, what is it? You wrote a very interesting essay. I want to read a couple

quotes from it as they're jumping off part, jumping off point. Here's the first one. The ability

to predict and control maybe neither necessary nor sufficient criteria for cognitively respectable

scientific theories. But the fact is that microeconomic theory has made no advances in the management

of economic processes since its current formalism was first elaborated in the 19th century.

You also wrote, that's end of the quote, you also wrote quote, Euclidean geometry has once

styled the science of space, but calling it a science did not make it one. We have come

to view advances in the axiomatization and extension of geometries events not in science

but in mathematics. Economics is often defined as the science of the distribution of scarce

resources, but calling it a science does not make it one. For much of their history,

since 1800, advances in both these disciplines have consisted in improvements of deductive

rigor, economy, and elegance of expression in better axiomatizations, and in the proofs

of more and more general results, without much concern as to the usefulness of these results.

Very dramatic statements, and I'm curious if you still feel that way. If you do, please

elaborate on those ideas, and if you don't, why don't you?

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