Val, You make some great points. This must be the day for this issue!
On a blog I've recently started reading, this was this week's "Deep Thought Friday" question:
How far is a field interested in moving us beyond its essential concern? For example, if the fundamental problem of economics is scarcity, how far will it assist in eliminating this?
My reply, posted just a few minutes before I read this thread:
I don't think that most fields of study can take us beyond their fundamental problems to any great degree, because the existence of the fundamental problems is generally taken as axiomatic by people within the field. To really solve fundamental problems, you first have to be willing to challenge fundamental assumptions (because working from those assumptions hasn't worked to solve the problem so far), and people who have invested years of their lives learning and working in the field are conditioned not to do precisely that. This is not to say that fundamental problems can't be solved - just that the solutions are likely to come from people who back into them or stumble upon them from vantage points outside the mainstream of thought in the field.
