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Let me lift a paragraph from my new book, The Perverse Economy, to note an
excellent example of the gap between economics and science.
In 1978, Koopmans delivered the presidential address to the American
Economic Association (Koopmans 1979). His lecture concerned the
difficulties that economists had in communicating with natural scientists.
Koopmans was not speaking out of ignorance of the ways of natural science.
In fact, he had earned a degree in quantum physics. Koopmans explained to a
meeting of the American Physical Association in 1979 that he initially
decided to switch from physics to economics because he felt the physical
sciences were far ahead of the social and economic sciences. (cited in
Mirowski 2002, p. 251).
Michael Perelman
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