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It's worth noting that most schools of economics are heavily indebted to physics. This came from a desire to increase economics' perceived rigor, and led to the (mis)appropriation of some core concepts[1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_equilibrium_theory, http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09672560600708011

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Yes, many economists aspired to make their studies more similar to physics in the early 20th century, to the point that there were interesting devices such as hydraulic computers made to model macroeconomics. Later in the 20th century, economists became more interested in statistics, and the majority of academic economists appear to remain most interested in using advanced statistics to model and predict behaviour. There are other economists who have based their study on basic assumptions and reasoning.

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