Gideon Rachman writes in the FT that economists need to be swept off their throne. He says:
Joseph Stiglitz, another Nobel prize-winning economist, has suggested that: “If science is defined by its ability to forecast the future, the failure of much of the economics profession to see the crisis coming should be a cause of great concern.” Yet Prof Stiglitz’s conclusion is disappointingly mild: economists must simply search for new “paradigms” – and then presumably go back into the business of scientific prediction.
For somebody educated as a historian, there is an obvious alternative conclusion to draw from Prof Stiglitz’s opening observation. And that is to conclude that the entire attempt to treat economics as a “science ... defined by its ability to forecast the future” is misconceived.
[...]
Some might respond that such a critique exaggerates the hardness of “hard” science and the softness of economics. Maybe so: but then again buildings constructed according to the laws of physics seem to stand, whereas policies and trading systems constructed according to the “laws” of economics have a nasty habit of collapsing.
There's not much that's new here. Others have raged against economists and economics in the past, though few may have made the case for historians in economists' stead.
What Rachman doesn't state explicitly is that human memory is short. We don't remember most things beyond a couple of generations (we just weren't there) and forget many things that happen within our own lifetimes. That's where the systematic study of history comes in.
