Social Economics

It ain't what you got, it's the way how'd you use it

   Economics is, by its nature, a social science, and any attempt to deal with human behavior by transmuting it into abstract mathematical formulas can only yield a few general patterns of behavior, not immutable laws.
   For example, consider the most basic principle of Economics 101, the Law of Supply and Demand. While it does describe the general pattern of behavior as one factor responds to the other, it also relies on that is known as the ceteris paribus  assumption -- "other things equal." In the real world, however, other things seldom if ever remain equal for long. Things change. People change. How, how much, whether and why they change can drive a statistician bonkers. Nonetheless, statistics can illustrate a pattern, and on the assumption that the pattern will hold, predictions can be made. Can you say heroic assumption?
   Call it the if-then hypothesis: Assuming that if this pattern holds and nothing changes, then such-and-so will result. But this works only so long as the "other things" remain equal and do not change.
   Another assumption in formulating and analyzing economic patterns is that people make rational choices. But are people rational? Do all people always behave rationally? Some may be rational some of the time, and there may be enough rationality often enough so that patterns can be detected. But even that measure of rationality changes. That's why economics is a social science.
   There was a time when Economics courses were taken out of the Social Studies departments at many colleges and transferred to the School of Business, and treated with mathematical rigor. The study was, in effect, dehumanized, and treated with the same attitudes common to marketing and advertising.
   It didn't work out well, and the trend is back toward treating economics as the study of what people do with what's available to them. And that is a social issue, not scientific.