Of course, economics is in many ways a science, and the work of our scholars and their computer models really does matter. But, as the economist Edwin R. A. Seligman put it in 1889, “Economics is a social science, i.e., it is an ethical and therefore an historical science….It is not a natural science, and therefore not an exact or purely abstract science.”
当然，经济学在许多方面都确实是一门科学，而这些学者及其计算机程序的贡献也不可抹杀。但正如经济学家埃德温·R·A·塞利格曼在1889年所说的那样：“经济学是一门社会科学，换言之，它关注的是伦理（译者注：正如不同的社会发展形态产生不同的经济伦理）并因此是一门研究事物在某段时期内发展状况的科学……它不属于自然科学，因此也不是一门严谨或者纯粹的抽象科学。”