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Re: alienacean's
Feb. 3rd, 2007 10:52 pmrecent rantings about sociology versus "hard" sciences
I sometimes share this quote with my classes:
An Indian-born economist once explained his personal theory of reincarnation to his graduate economics class, “If you are a good economist, a virtuous economist, you are reborn as a physicist. But if you are an evil, wicked economist, you are reborn as a sociologist.” A sociologist might say that this quote shows what is wrong with economists: they want a subject that is fundamentally about human beings to have the mathematical certainty of the hard sciences … But good economists know that the speaker was talking about something else entirely: the sheer difficulty of the subject. Economics is harder than physics; luckily it is not quite as hard as sociology. -Paul Krugman, Peddling Prosperity
I sometimes share this quote with my classes:
An Indian-born economist once explained his personal theory of reincarnation to his graduate economics class, “If you are a good economist, a virtuous economist, you are reborn as a physicist. But if you are an evil, wicked economist, you are reborn as a sociologist.” A sociologist might say that this quote shows what is wrong with economists: they want a subject that is fundamentally about human beings to have the mathematical certainty of the hard sciences … But good economists know that the speaker was talking about something else entirely: the sheer difficulty of the subject. Economics is harder than physics; luckily it is not quite as hard as sociology. -Paul Krugman, Peddling Prosperity
