[throwawaysocks]

Economics is also the source and home of some of the most bullshit-prone theories and explanations. That's why I ultimately dropped my Economics major. It's full of people that got into the field precisely due to their passion for of their highly politicized opinions. Those people generate elaborate theories, data sets, and models to justify their almost always a priori beliefs -- always under the guise of supposedly rational debate.

I would argue -- as a non-physicist and non-biologist and non-chemist -- that physics or biology or chemistry should take the crown. All explain historical phenomena via models and also extend those models to the present day and even the future, allowing eminently testable predictions. Additionally, the questions these fields pose are typically but not always far less likely to ground out in political preference and are therefore less susceptible (though not invincible) to bullshit.

[bordercases]

I was, and still am extremely grateful for my microeconomics prof: he is a contrarian (http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canadian-economist-never-k...) that forced us to reason on a wide class of non-societal examples from first principles whenever possible. As far as being politicized goes, macroecon seems to be a bit more plagued than micro, mod any "homo economicus" fallacies.

He also writes stuff like this: https://www.amazon.com/Institutional-Revolution-Measurement-... which showed me how effective economics can be for historical and legal analysis.

The natural sciences have a difficult time mapping onto human concerns bar whatever you get out of engineering.