Is Economics a Real Science

Introduction

“I love you!” is a sentence that most people like to hear a lot and the fortunate among them will have heard it several times in their lives. The less fortunate of them may have also realized that not every time it was true what they heard or at least not to the degree they would have expected. The problem of proving whether it is true or not will even confuse the best scientists among them and will most probably end up in trying to prove the contrary. Having been cheated on might be a proof that it was a lie while even that might be a wrong interpretation, who knows? Similar to this problem is nearly any question we are dealing with. According to the question Kant once posed, do we know what we know and if so, how (Klamer,2007) ? In order to find out, there will be a comparison of economics and the definition of science as well as other sciences and an expansion of the definition of science in terms of being a conversation.

When entering a discussion about Economics at a university or congress, there will be no doubt about the degree to which Economics is a science. At first glance it has everything a non-academic person would expect a science to have, such as a lot of smart people with all kinds of degrees and titles arguing and discussing their theories against other ones. The amount of models and mathematical formulas, predictions, theories and the incredible amount of work that is put into the topic further advances the impression about economics being a science. On the other hand, economists like to argue against theories and research studies that these are “not scientific” (Klamer, 2007), which leads to the question if and to which degree economics is a science at all.

Being a science by disagreement

The “hard-nosed” scientists as A. Klamer (2007) called those scientists being of the opinion that a science consists of “logic and mirror” or the logical interpretation of facts proven by observation of reality, would call economics...