In the essay, he argued that economists have somehow adopted assumptions into axioms. He illustrated this in a number of ways. I'm trying very hard not to quote almost the whole essay, because it is THAT good, but I'll quote the very pertinent paragraphs that should be of interest:
Classical economics is built on very strong assumptions that quickly become axioms: the rationality of economic agents (the premise that every economic agent, be that a person or a company, acts to maximize his profits), the 'invisible hand' (that agents, in the pursuit of their own profit, are led to do what is best for society as a whole) and market efficiency (that market prices faithfully reflect all known information about assets), for example. An economist once told me, to my bewilderment: "These concepts are so strong that they supersede any empirical observation." As economist Robert Nelson argued in his book, Economics as Religion (Pennsylvania State Univ. Press, 2002), the marketplace has been deified.
Physicists, on the other hand, have learned to be suspicious of axioms. If empirical observation is incompatible with a model, the model must be trashed or amended, even if it is conceptually beautiful or mathematically convenient. So many accepted ideas have been proven wrong in the history of physics that physicists have grown to be critical and queasy about their own models.
Unfortunately, such healthy scientific revolutions have not yet taken hold in economics, where ideas have solidified into dogmas. These are perpetuated through the education system: students don't question formulas they can use without thinking. Although numerous physicists have been recruited by financial institutions over the past few decades, they seem to have forgotten the methodology of the natural sciences as they absorbed and regurgitated the existing economic lore.
Try to read the whole essay if you have the chance. It should cause blood to boil among a group of people that shall remain nameless. :)
Zz.
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