The article talks about economics as a division of social science (Heilbroner, 1991). According to Jack Hirshleifer, economics appreciates its grand status because it provided part of the social theory’s master pattern. However, while social biology also contributed or supplied the other portion. Economics and social biology are both combined to produce a united social science. Therefore, certain crucial principles such as opportunity cost and scarcity, global bioeconomic methods of selection, and competition will continue to be effective for predicting and analyzing the course of social organization and human behavior.
An economic facet of life now seems existent in every aspect of society, and the two massive alterations from Marxian and Weberian cause these changes (Heilbroner, 1991). The Weberian part talks about the radical shift in social beliefs. That takes several forms, such as the worldly ethic rise, the acceptance of social relations commodity view, and the daily reduction of usage value to exchange value. However, the Marxian change comes from the original institutional background with its top placement of predetermined relationships, especially those of wage-labor and the immensely magnified fixed capital importance. Modifications in the first set bring about maximizing emergence not as concealed mindset but as a sensible thought mode. The second set brings about synchronizing labor energy means with no equivalent in command or traditional societies.
Limitations of economics as a universal science springs from its market society failure as a social order (Heilbroner, 1991). The social understanding we achieve from current economics is disappointing. If contemporary economics is to be appreciated by its historical and moral content, people would be obliged to place it at the depths and not the top of its history. However, the writer closes with the conceptual formulations and the narrational accounts where order takes over chaos. That concludes that economics can play a vital role but never definitive or final.
Reference
Heilbroner, R. (1991). Economics as universal science. Social Research, 58(2), 457-474.