Publisher's Synopsis
Be patient with me. Many historians of science now say of Tycho Brahe (1546-1601) that he is the scientist.
Who made Kepler and Newton's scientific achievements possible. The formulation of the laws of physics, which have proven to be very useful in the physical sciences, was only possible thanks to Brahe's efforts in determining the motions of celestial bodies. Without the vast empirical data that Brahe collected, the theories developed by his student Kepler or Newton would not have come to light, or - with equal probability - other theories that are apparently plausible and justified, but simply wrong, would have appeared and continued.
A large number of people, including the economist Paul Ormerod, have used this point to launch a rather vigorous attack on classical economic theory, and their reasoning is sound. The theory of human action advanced by the neoclassical school of economics is not based on any empirical observation of how people make decisions or on any neuroscience research; Instead, unlike advances in astronomy and physics, in which theories are based on observation, it has been reversed. Acceptable theories have been developed about how people make their economic decisions, and then a great deal of rules are built by inferring from those initial assumptions. But it may turn out in the end that these suppositions, convenient as they may seem, are quite wrong; People do not make their decisions based on complete information; They do not compare the value of all the choices available to them, and they are influenced by the behavior of others or by their own behavior
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in the past when they make their decisions. Their preferences or ideas of value are also influenced by context. Once you acknowledge these facts, the entire mathematical structure of economic thought begins to crack at its very foundations.
But a similar accusation can be made of the (much less influential) school of thought that underpins most marketing theories of decision-making. Marketing rarely attempts to be an independent science of its own, but when it does, it is certainly not trying to be an empirical science again. Like economics, marketing makes an assumption about how people should be affected by any course of action. Then he creates a whole set of "rules" deduced from this initial assumption. He also decides his actions on the basis of a very dangerous illusion; It is that people know and can accurately describe the mental mechanisms underlying their decisions and actions
