First of all, that was a hugely impressive exposition. I hope that my further response will not be interpreted as belittling or denigrating that rigorous and incisive critique of the process of the social sciences.

At the outset of the essay the primary distinction between the physical sciences and the social sciences was identified as being the subject matter of those two amalgamations of bodies of thought. The latter “study events with thinking participants” [author’s emphasis].

I agree. As a political economist it has occurred to me that, because all of the variables in the economy are interdependent, it is like meteorology — only with the movements of its quantifiable variables determined by the added unpredictability of the actions of human beings reacting to changes in those variables.

I submit, however, that a fundamental distinction inherent in the social sciences is that they are inevitably prescriptive. That is especially true, I think, of the discipline discussed most centrally in the essay, economics, but it is true of any analysis of any part of society.

To identify a problem for study as a social scientist is to bring a person’s moral values into the process at the very start. Social scientists cannot operate without one eye on ‘social policy’. Even when the only goal is ‘to better understand’ some aspect of society, it is inescapably implied that such “better” understanding will in some way help to ‘better’ society.

I’m not saying that is a bad thing. I’m simply saying that it is an inescapable element of the social sciences that separates them from the physical sciences.

[By the way, I have figured out how the interdependent, chaotic nature of the economy can be ended by making the supply of money (as currency) utterly exogenous: “How to Transform the Society of any Nation” here in Medium.]