Is coherent social theory not defined in the context of natural science possible?

[rousseau]

Well, is it?

Does it make sense to define a social theory without leaning heavily on natural laws?

 

[tantric]

For most of history, that's the only option. Consider the central economy of Marxism - where's the model? How do you predict how many tons of wheat you will need, and how do you adjust the system to produce it? As computing advances, ecosystem models are coming around, from the Lotka-Volterra equations that could predict snowshoe hare populations to the modern work being done with closed ecosystems. It will likely never work for societies if people are aware of the models and have access to commodity markets, but, say 30 years from now, we might know how much wheat and how to tweak it within a standard of error. Is that what you're looking for?

 

[rousseau]

I'm not completely sure what I'm looking for. The sentiment comes from a world that seems to make a lot of claims about society and how it works without actually understanding the underlying mechanics.

For example:

- a capitalist economic model based on the premise that all men are equal is not a coherent social theory, as all men are not created equal in the eyes of biology
- a theory that a patriarchal or matriarchal, social model, can be broken and equalized is not a coherent social theory, as one sex is bound to be dominant in the context of its society

The reason both of these examples are incoherent is because they don't base their premises in natural law. I'm sure there are countless other examples, but those are two major ones that come to mind.

It seems like the world is now just waking up to science and what it means to our world.