A dynamic presentation of material causality would have the tendency toward general equilibrium criteria controlling sub-optimal, unbalanced, disequilibrium, chaotic economic states as these coalesce into a quantitative specimen of general optimality. Even assuming such a view to be achievable, many academics would nonetheless resist altering the economics curriculum to include the formal dynamics necessary for its realization. The assumption here is that little would be gained other than an objective implementation of what is already described in the abstract.

While these sentiments are entirely valid in themselves, they might not properly appreciate the nature of scientific advance. Science always strives to capture the mundane in a more effective way; and superior effect has always been achieved when ideas are given their realization on the objective plane, which can only be spanned by the dimensions of both space and time.

For example: prior to 1903 all theories of flight were equal because no one had flown. But, since the Wright brothers’ experiment at Kitty Hawk, there have been no discussions on any point of aeronautical engineering except as related to vital components of devices capable of sustained, controlled departures from terra firma.

Absent such demonstrations, it is impossible to carry uncouth ideas as to ‘where the real issue lies’ against the predispositions of duly constituted authority. The Wright brothers, to continue our example, had to convince the tenured and grant-worthy of their era that lift was not the impediment to flight. An engine attached to a kite could easily generate enough lift to raise itself along with a crew and cargo. The critical problem was, rather, one of aerodynamic control of the instabilities created whenever a kite generates its own relative wind from an on-board source of propulsion.

Fortunately for the Wrights, they had an emphatic way to assert the primacy of their viewpoint. The agreed purpose of aeronautical engineering was to fly; they flew; and Orville's theories about aeronautic control were hard to refute while Wilbur orbited overhead.

But economics, having no visible purpose beyond continuation of its canonical tradition, does not offer especially dramatic ways to change the subject. We suggest that breaking-away from economic scholasticism might begin by simply rendering a few rival theories of economic causality with sufficient mathematical rigor as to permit self-expression of the theories’ intrinsic behaviors.

Continuing our example from aeronautical control, consider what might be proved by the interaction of two individuals:

‘A’ is an excellent pilot who learned to fly by ‘the seat of his pants’. He has had no formal training and knows nothing about aeronautical or any other sort of engineering. His skills owe entirely to practice and aptitude.

‘B’ is is a computer programmer who has never flown anything, or even been in anything that flies.

What would such an experiment prove? It would prove that aeronautics is a science. Those who invented aeronautical engineering have abstracted their observations successfully insofar as their learning, having been reduced to a narrative, can be re-evoked into a fully dimensioned, objective experience of flight that functions in a physical medium other than an operating airfoil.

While economics also abstracts from observation, its abstractions have yet to embody blueprints for constructing a working physical analog to its antecedent phenomena. SFEcon's abstraction upon economics’ causal suppositions does not fly; but it is, so far as we know, unique for its continuous specification of the amount of commodity J in the service of sector I of economy K at time t for all I,J,K,t. Our abstraction of economic principles resembles engineering praxis because of its analogous capacity for resuscitation from its abstract, narrative state back into the fully dimensioned world of a visibly functional device.

Do not be distracted in that this device is a computer programmed for emulation. Though the computer aspires to be an abstract, digital device, it remains part our analog world. And the simulation programs it runs must be faithful to that world if they are to run at all. The abstract world of our imagination is a limitless realm of possibilities having no real counterpart. The narrower world bounded by space and time only imposes limits on our thinking if we actively make it so.

Accepting the challenge to realize knowledge in a physical analog is what makes it so for the more solid sciences. The simulator has neither the imagination to be fooled, nor any need of a baccalaureate requiring its certification of things proper. No computer can be made to hallucinate the movement implied by successive statics in order to complete its general education requirement in economics.