Can Economics Be a Science? Epistemology of economics

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The inability of the discipline of economics to anticipate and above all explain the succession of crises that culminates with the one that began in 2008 is no accident. It is the expression of the methodological and epistemological weaknesses of an entire profession. Refusal of the historicity of the categories and entities of the economy, confusion between theory and models, balkanization into a multitude of competing and often contradictory paradigms, vain search for microeconomic foundations for macroeconomics in defiance of empirical relevance. In response to these failures, the techniques for analyzing masses of data, especially financial data, are triumphing today, without any clear prospect of a theoretical overhaul. The internationalization and extreme specialization of the discipline explain both the professional recognition of economists and their inability to build a science in due form. Prominent Nobel laureates have stressed that such an impasse should be overcome by a collective effort of reflexivity about the incentives and processes that shape the profession and guide research agendas. The multiplication of places of confrontation between various paradigms could favor the emergence of a modest discipline, auxiliary to citizens and political choices.