Introduction Modern economics defined itself, particularly after the marginal revolution, as a value-neutral, positive science modeled on physics. Equilibrium, optimization, and productivity became its organizing principles. This methodological choice delivered analytical clarity and mathematical tractability, but it did so by abstracting from historical irreversibility, institutional change, and ecological limits. As a result, economics became increasingly incapable of addre

In recent years, the proliferation of data-driven analysis has reshaped the epistemological foundations of economics. Vast computational capacity and algorithmic learning promise to turn uncertainty into calculable probability, and complexity into manageable prediction. Yet, the triumph of data often conceals a deeper conceptual poverty. As economics has increasingly become an empirical technocracy, it risks losing sight of what makes social inquiry meaningful: context, purpo