In his Nobel lecture[0], Hayek condemned these rationalizations cloaked in superficial appearance of rigor as scientism. It seems to me that this failure of th

In his Nobel lecture[0], Hayek condemned these rationalizations cloaked in superficial appearance of rigor as scientism. It seems to me that this failure of the economists to guide policy more successfully is closely connected with their propensity to imitate as closely as possible the procedures of the brilliantly successful physical sciences – an attempt which in our field may lead to outright error. It is an approach which has come to be described as the “scientistic” attitude – an attitude which, as I defined it some thirty years ago, “is decidedly unscientific in the true sense of the word, since it involves a mechanical and uncritical application of habits of thought to fields different from those in which they have been formed.”[1] I want today to begin by explaining how some of the gravest errors of recent economic policy are a direct consequence of this scientistic error. [0]: https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/economic-sciences/1974/hayek/lecture/ https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/economic-sciences/1974/hay... [1]: “Scientism and the Study of Society”, Economica, vol. IX, no. 35, August 1942, reprinted in The Counter-Revolution of Science, Glencoe, Ill., 1952, p. 15 of this reprint.