Still cant believe the economics profession managed to convince people it deserves a seat at the table of the hard sciences
It was set up by the Swedish central bank to free ride on the good reputation of the actual prizes. Their motivation was to push economic policies beneficial to themselves (mainly promoting the political independence of central banks in the beginning).
The 'table of hard science' according to Alfred Nobel also includes medicine (not science, but we'll let it pass), literature (really not science), and peace (really really not science).
Anyway, the Nobel Prize for economics is not actually a Nobel prize anyway.
Some of it is hard science, with peer-reviewed papers, experiments and statistics. There is even some overlap with chemistry.
Some of it is engineering. Doctors are closer to engineers than they are to scientists. They have a problem (a sick patient who needs help), constraints (time, availability, cost, ...), tools (drugs, diagnosis tools, ...), and need to turn all that into a solution.
Some of it is craftsmanship. Surgeons are like mechanics for the human body, a job requiring dexterity and practical thinking.
Some of it is care. With nurses needing as much empathy as they need practical skills.
It's also probably the most important science, since it deals with issues central to human life and prosperity.
I mean, I love exoplanets too, but they'll never affect how we understand society and change the understanding and direction of human civilization.
I agree. I meant to make two separate claims.
> The attempts at this in economics put it at the absolute low end of the soft sciences, as far as I can tell.
Economics has many subfields. The major division is between microeconomics and macroeconomics.
I think a lot of the "soft science" reputation the field has comes from the Macro side. This is a very tough field to study, since the study object (the world economy) is sentient, extremely intelligent, and adapts to any new findings. It can certainly be seen as a partially failed science as a result.
Macro gets the headlines, but the Micro side is what I'm impressed by. We have an enormous amount of knowledge accumulated over the last 200 years, and understand society and markets immensely more than before Adam Smith started thinking about this stuff.
Every science relies an math.