The Importance of Measurable Magnitudes in Theory

In the social sciences often that is treated as important which happens to be accessible to measurement. Just because we are able to construct measures of unemployment, gross domestic production, consumption and other economic quantities does not mean these factors are causally related in scientifically preordained relationships based on quantifiable and testable magnitudes. Attempting to formulate meaning from the relationships between these aggregates is akin to scientists studying gases with no connection to the causal process being studied. Repeating the same experiment with an experimenter with a different name or a container of different color will still yield the same results making the original researchers theorizing pointless.