Pat Gunning wrote: >And I don't buy the argument that because >economics is a social or a human science, it >necessarily is value laden. The data about human >beings can be treated just as objectively as the >data of physics, although a different method must be used. Underlying Prof. Gunning's response is the "fact-value" distinction. Some wag somewhere has said that �scientific� economists suffer from physics envy. And indeed, many economists lay claim to a �positive� or �value-free� view of economic relations based purely on precise measurement and complex mathematics, just like physics. But astrology is also based on precise measurement and bewildering mathematics; its status as a science�and its relation to reality�is not thereby established. Economists may bristle at the comparison, but it is clear that math and measurement are insufficient to establish a science. In the first place, mathematics is not an empirical science; it is a set of formal and idealized relationships and indifferent to any particular reality other than its own axioms. There is nothing in economics that is driven by a mathematical logic: time, money, culture and uncertainty prevent this.[1] The homo economicus, the �pure� economic creature, simply does not exist, and were we to meet such a creature, we would regard him as grotesque. In the second place, measurement itself depends on theory and all theories require value judgments. For example, in measuring unemployment, the economist must� "�first start by making the decision that it needs theoretical explanation and second [he] must define what unemployment is, both of which are blatantly value-laden (and political) activities. Furthermore, the choice of what methods to use to investigate this phenomenon also involves value judgments, as does selection of the critical criteria about what will be accepted as the �final term� in the analysis, the bases of what arguments will or will not be accepted. However, values and value judgments enter into theory construction on the ground floor by giving the theorist the �vision� of the reality s(he) is attempting to explain. This �vision� is pre-analytical in the sense that it exists before theoretical activity takes place.[Charles M. A. Clark]" Neoclassical economics are therefore, like every thing else human, value-laden; it cannot be a question of a false dichotomy between �values� and �facts.� Rather, it is a question of examining the values by which the facts are explained or even perceived. The fact-value distinction lies at the heart of modernism, and is best expressed by "Hume's Fork": [1] �If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance; let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames: for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion.� (David Hume, Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding) The major problem with this is that the major fact about humans is that everything they do is value-laden. Anyone who claims is have a "value-free" judgement is merely hiding their own values behind a scientistic smokescreen; they are hiding them certainly from their audience and, worse, from themselves. As D. McCloskey put it: "Modernism promises knowledge free from doubt, metaphysics, morals, and personal conviction; what it delivers merely renames as Scientific Method the scientist�s and especially the economic scientist�s metaphysics, morals, and personal convictions. It cannot, and should not, deliver what it promises. Scientific knowledge is no different from other personal knowledge. Trying to make it different, instead of simply better, is the death of science." At the end of the day, economics is about a class of social relations, and such relations are never value free. John C. Medaille