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Add CommentIt's similar to Kant's realization that we don't actually see or know the "thing-in-itself" but build perceptions and ideas based on the data we are able to gather with our senses.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf we think of a dog's nose, which is able to smell about 400 times more accurately and finely than a human nose, the problem becomes clear. Even if our ideas are relatively good explanations of the data (coffee smells coming from the kitchen therefore Joe made coffee this morning) they can be disastrously wrong when the data is inadequate.
We place patterns on the data, no matter how sparse, in order to make some sense to it.
But we rarely admit that our models are often almost irrelevant and sometimes completely misleading.
Economics is a case in point. The underlying economy is so complex, including the complexity of human behavior and motivation, that it is virtually impossible to control or predict.
But like gamblers in Las Vegas we keep trying.