Before economics became all dynamic stochastic general equilibrium matters and strategic games of imperfect information, it was about 'how does the machine work.'
Not sure why we need a New Field to study that.
> The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design. To the naive mind that can conceive of order only as the product of deliberate arrangement, it may seem absurd that in complex conditions order, and adaptation to the unknown, can be achieved more effectively by decentralizing decisions and that a division of authority will actually extend the possibility of overall order. Yet that decentralization actually leads to more information being taken into account (FA Hayek, The Fatal Conceit)
I agree that we don't need a new field, but it seems also that the idea of designing progress is a fool's errand.
https://twitter.com/WordsByBennett/status/115630161497577063...
It compares the proposed approach to WW2 Abraham Wald airplane bullet pattern analysis [1] and Survivor Bias.
[1] https://medium.com/@penguinpress/an-excerpt-from-how-not-to-...