Editing Law (principle) (section)

== Laws in social sciences ==

The question of whether "laws" can be applied to the social sciences in the same way as the natural sciences has been debated for many years. <ref name=":0">{{Cite book |last=McIntylre |first=Lee C. |title=Laws and Explanation in the Social Sciences: Defending a Science of Human Behavior |date=1996 |publisher=Westview Press |isbn=0-8133-3648-1 |location=Boulder, Colorado |pages=1–2,189}}</ref> Philosophers such as [[Lee McIntyre]] are optimistic that "law-like" explanations of human behavior can be valid and useful.<ref name=":0" />

Laws of [[economics]] are an attempt in [[modelization]] of economic behavior. [[Marxism]] criticized the [[belief]] in eternal laws of economics, which it considered a product of the [[ideology#Ideology as an instrument of social reproduction|dominant ideology]]. It claimed that in fact, those so-called laws of economics were only the historical laws of [[capitalism]], that is of a particular historical social formation. With the advent, in the 20th century, of the application of mathematical, statistical, and experimental techniques to economics, economic theory matured into a corpus of knowledge rooted in the scientific method rather than in philosophical argument.