Oh yes.

After all, Economics is known as the dismal science for a reason. It is a science.

The problem is, the soft sciences such as economics and sociology have to deal with a very different set of real world problems than the hard sciences of physics and chemistry.

Two examples:

1. Consumer Confidence and Business Confidence are key forecasters and determinants of economic activity. But since when was ‘confidence’ something that could be objectively measured? You can only determine confidence by asking people how confident they are, which means you are relying on people’s opinions of what’s happening in their own mind. Psychology (another science) also faces this problem. Physicists are so lucky to be dealing with objective measurables, but they only deal with a tiny aspect of reality. Most of the ‘real world’ isn’t really like that.

2. A key feature of economics is value. Value can be assessed in many ways for many purposes (Book value, insured value, Tax Value, Net Realisable Value, etc. etc.) and is expressed in some form of monetary units. Money - currency - not only fluctuates over time with inflation, but actually fluctuates every nanosecond against all other currencies and all other goods and services one can buy. Hard sciences measure things in units that are constant, but in the real world where we try and measure real things like happiness, confidence, and value, the units of measurement are entirely rubbery.

So when one applies the scientific method to the world of wealth creation one shouldn’t expect it to look like physics, but more like economics with some psychology included.

This is the real world of value and wealth generation and it’s dealing with real money. EVERY possible approach to finding a better way to generate wealth, predict the future, improve performance at the margins, and so forth has been tried from Astrology to Zoology and absolutely including science.

And there have been huge successes. Enterprise Resource Management (ERP) and Manufacturing Requirements Planning (MRP) systems such as SAP are now used to run most of the worlds large manufacturing enterprises, and major business enterprises.

AI Expert Trading Systems perform the majority of trades on the markets of the world.

Algorithms Take Control of Wall Street

Goldman Sachs Automated Trading Replaces 600 Traders With 200 Engineers - Slashdot

Machines are driving Wall Street's wild ride, not humans

And experts with Nobel Prizes in Economics have tried to apply AI algorithms and economic theories to risk return equations in many ways, including the ill fated Long Term Capital Management hedge fund:

Long-Term Capital Management - Wikipedia

The tech companies such as Amazon, IBM, Microsoft, Facebook, Google, Oracle, and Apple are the epitome of companies applying the scientific method to the generation of wealth. Jeff Bezos is possibly the world’s greatest wealth generation scientist.

The scientific approach to wealth creation is constantly being tried in new ways, and frequently succeeds. Every engineering project is a scientifically based project aimed at wealth generation.

The major obstacle to achieving complete success seems to be that human beings aren’t good subjects for the application of the right hand of alchemy (the scientific method). But that’s OK. We swing in some psychologists and sociologists with the advertising industry and we know how to trick, persuade, and motivate people to behave the way we want.

Of course, the application of the scientific method to wealth generation may have good wealth generation outcomes, but that doesn’t mean it’s good for human beings.

Our current technology paradigm isn’t about providing humans with technology to improve their quality of life or assist with achieving their purposes, such as keeping the only ecosphere we have in good condition. It’s about making us use and rely on more and more technology regardless of whether we like it, want it, or it’s good for us.

And our methods of generating wealth from provision of food may be resulting in lots of obese people eating empty calories, but it does generate profits.

But the biggest obstacle to the application of the scientific method to wealth generation seems to be politics. We have enough food to feed the world, but nearly a billion people are hungry or starving.

And Vladimir Putin is now rumoured to be the richest man in the world.

His spectacular rise in wealth wasn’t achieved by applying the scientific method to the problem.

So whether you go to Harvard to study the science of economics so you can apply the scientific method to generate wealth through business, or whether you study commerce so you know something about law, marketing, financing, politics etc., it’s still just ways of learning about the many techniques of applying rational approaches to generating wealth.

And yes - there are lots of them.

The market place is a competitive jungle and wealth generation is a competitive field. That means everyone else, including Vladimir Putin, is trying to apply any promising technique to beat the competition. Certainly the scientific approach is widely used by many wealth generators, but the winners are the ones who perform best. Jeff Bezos is absolutely an example of the application of the scientific approach to wealth generation. It’s well worth studying how he did it, and why he enjoys such success where others are less successful. CK hint - he does it better.

Hopefully though, these thoughts help a little.