Economics has emerged as a major discipline today of interest to all because of its impact on our day-to-day life. What has been achieved so far has been truly impressive, although the discipline is not as successful as one would expect. Notwithstanding what mainstream economics does or strives for, it does not really meet the criteria to be called a natural science yet. This book is an attempt to steer it in that direction.

Although natural sciences, such as physics, chemistry, biology, or geology employ logic and mathematics (as a condensed form of logic), it is never the sole ingredient. Stepwise observations are organized in a logical fashion, often with the help of tentative or approximate hypotheses, and both the existing observations and predicted outcomes are carefully compared. The understanding of the next level or of similar but different systems grows progressively, based on the successful ideas or an understanding developed earlier. Naturally, there is interdependence in natural sciences as a consequence of this kind of development. In general, precise knowledge, successful ideas, or techniques developed in one area of the natural sciences become easily translated into another.

This interdependent structure of research in the natural sciences also gets reflected in the graduate level course structure for students in their respective disciplines. Students of one major discipline of the natural sciences have to learn the basic and established concepts in other disciplines: Physics majors learn concepts of chemistry, biology, or geology; biology majors learn basic concepts of physics and chemistry, along with others. This practice is somehow not there yet for the social sciences; the graduate students here do learn mathematics and statistics but not the basic concepts of physics, chemistry, or biology. Personal interests are, of course, exceptions and are not counted here!

To many, this is the main reason why economics, which also started becoming formalized much later compared with most other branches of the natural sciences, could not boast of the spectacular successes achieved by other disciplines. Among others, econophysicists believe in the need for a similar mutation of ideas from economics and physics, for the healthy evolutionary growth in both.