[chaostheory]

Economics like psychology aren't true sciences yet because they don't have a repeatable theoretical model. They're like Alchemy before it evolved in to Chemistry or Astrology before it evolved in to Astronomy. How can you get a repeatable theoretical model? imo you would need to model a world simulation near or at the level of atoms. The more abstraction and the more assumptions the simulation has, the less useful for the social "sciences". imo this is what Hari Seldon's "equation" is in the Foundation series; a simulation

[michaelscott]

Note that even with Seldon's predictions, a requirement for their fulfilment was that the predictions not be made public so that they would not be altered. The difference in economics and psychology, unlike in chemistry or astronomy, is that these fields are self-reflective. They have an "awareness" of themselves as disciplines and can change and act on information of themselves to in turn gain new "awareness" and behaviour.

Economics is even worse, as it does hold to some fundamental aspects of finite resource allocation and supply/demand in addition to the self-reflectance. This means its model is probably some hybrid of physics-like fundamentals and the weird self-awareness of the "soft science" disciplines.

[nathias]

'Repeatable theoretical model' is not an episemological criterion of a science, usually for empirical sciences what is needed are fasifiable predictions.

[jkhdigital]

Falsifiable predictions are generated by theories. You don’t just throw out predictions haphazardly and test them, they always originate from a theory.