Nature of Competition: The Nature of Scientific Inquiry

 

Now we arrive at the final yet most critical question, “How.” The reasons for such  criticality are that we stay in economics and that the first assumption therein is ceteris paribus. In short, we play the game of economy, or utility per hour, with all 5 W’s given.

 

Why science. One of the buzz words in the US has been STEM over the recent decades: science, technologies, engineering and mathematics. The essence of STEM is needless to say the “science.” Science is the foundation of both technologies and engineering, while mathematics is used for the sole purpose of calculation expediency.

             What we need in the practice is T and E based on S. All through, M is used for the sake of convenience. Apparently, science is never of convenience but it is for convenience: scientific theories are ultimately to apply for more and better conveniences in life. We when exogenous to macroeconomics never say “for the sake of convenience” in building theories.

             Solving mathematical equations might be fun, but has nothing to do with scientific theories. 

 

What a scientific inquiry is. Having a dream, a wish, a preference, a want or a need, we go for it with something in our hands. We in science call the former an end and the latter a means. For instance, the household goes to the market armed with the purchasing power for the end of getting a demand to come true. On the other side of the equation is the firm armed with a supply in want of the purchasing power. The invincible hand never lets empty-handed in the market.   

             In a word, the means is the cause to the end of effect. If we name the means incorrectly we never obtain the end. The end of science is application of theories to the practice. On the flipside, no one in the virtuous mind wants any practice to be maleficial. If so, each and every scientist shall name the cause correctly (正名, zhèngmíng in pinyin). More generally, a scientific theory is all about the causality, or naming the true cause to an effect of choice at the moment; incidentally, the choice in economics is named as utility. 

             Barking up the wrong tree, “liquidity preference” included, we’ll never get there from here. Don’t get us wrong: Such a getting is never interspatial (L^-3) as in Macroeconomics but it is intertemporal (T^-1) while staying in Here.

             In economics, money is of no use other than a medium of exchange. On the side of demand, money was earned in the previous period through working hard on the solid ground. The product purchased will be used in the current period in the process of consumption. On the side of supply, the firm works hard in the current period to be equipped with the product. The money earned after supply is used in the flowing period in the process of production. The essence of economic activities is working hours in the past or now to working hours now or in the future. 

            A question: Where is the place of money in the sun? The answer: It is in the veil. Again, it’s the economy (M∙U∙T^-1), your Excellency.   

 

Idealization, the first step. In the practice of science, a researcher starts from idealization. In this regard, we quote a page from J.S. Mill:

                                                                             (Utilitarianism, 1861, Ch. IV)

             We live up to 125 year in Here. We prepare for the future which we dream to be better than the present. We would be happier now if we dream of a happier future . And, power and fame are utilities in different names and originate from wealth, the collective noun of assets. On the flipside, money is a veil. We might focus on the product and the asset. 

             "Down with noises and veils!" 

             Let us imagine the process of theorizing of Sir Isaac Newton. The apple falls down to the earth. Why would that be? Many days or months of hard thinking and imagining later: Aha, the gravity between two pieces of masses. He idealizes away all but three things, the mass of the earth, the mass of the apple and the distance between the two. If he had paid attention all the details, veil-like or otherwise, he could never have come up with the great Theory of Gravity. Surefire, his or the tree’s mass was many orders-of-magnitude greater than the apple’s. He rightly disregarded all the other masses than the two. He disregarded other noises such as air resistance and humidity.  

               “Minors, get away!”