IS ECONOMICS SCIENTIFIC? IS SCIENCE SCIENTIFIC? – Part 3

Part 3

The third part of Cartwright’s model is the simulacrum. She begins her discussion of simulacra by giving the secondary OED deﬁnition: “Something having merely the form or appearance of a certain thing, without possessing its substance or proper qualities.” The simulacrum moves away from reality in order to be able to generate laws. The process begins with a set of laws of phenomena but then develops causal relationships and fundamental laws. Cartwright envisions the simulacrum as a home to these laws. Continue reading →

IS ECONOMICS SCIENTIFIC? IS SCIENCE SCIENTIFIC? – Part 2

Part 2

In The Dappled World, Cartwright (1999, 31) upholds “metaphysical nomological pluralism,” which is “the doctrine that nature is governed in different domains by different systems of laws not necessarily related to each other in a systematic or uniform way; by a patchwork of laws.” In this view, “covering laws,” such as those of gravity, which hold over several unrelated domains, are distorted and lack realism when we disregard the necessity to apply them differently to the different domains. Continue reading →