Hume, your definition of science is not even close to anyone else's defintion of science. At best you have described a philosophy.

Nowhere have you mentioned actually testing these 'universally valid' propositions.

You also fail in your first three propositions that you think are 'universal'.
1. Every individual’s life time is limited: TRUE and irrelevant to anything you have said.
2.All human action consists of preferring A to B: while being very hypothetical, I consider this FALSE. Unless of course you can move this proposition out of the realm of a hypothetical proposition and put a specific values on A and B and test it. I don't think you can.
3.There is an optimum amount of each factor of production, ie holding other factors constant, you can’t indefinitely increase production by indefinitely increasing the one factor in question. What? No, I don't believe there are set optima in nature, but then you aren't really talking about optima here, you're talking about constraints.
If you mean 'constraints', then yes constraints to production exist.

Your approach to derive 'valid logical deductions' from axioms is at best a philosophy. Economic philosophies are a dime a dozen.

You seem to believe that if people may not immediately think of contrary real-world situations to axioms that you consider 'universally true', then that is somehow evidence (or even proof!) for your propositions. It is not.
Science needs some sort of empiricism and testing.

Without real-world testing of your 'axioms' you cannot hold that they are universally true, you only assert it.

You got no hand, bluffer.

Bugsy
I got (and amended) the definition from Pelican.
Also see: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/science

Therefore your first statement is false.

“Nowhere have you mentioned actually testing these 'universally valid' propositions.”

You are assuming that science necessarily means empirical science. It doesn’t.

What about trigonometry? Or surveying? Are they sciences? If not, what are they? Art? Religions?

Do you empirically test Pythagoras’s theorem by analyzing the statistical frequency with which right-angled triangles comply?

How then?

The universally valid propositions can be tested.

“1. Every individual’s life time is limited: TRUE

Thank you.

“and irrelevant to anything you have said.”

It’s relevant because economics is about human production. Therefore your statement is false.

“2.All human action consists of preferring A to B: while being very hypothetical, I consider this FALSE.”

By denying it you have preferred A to B and performed a self-contradiction thus affirming the proposition.

Thank you.

“Unless of course you can move this proposition out of the realm of a hypothetical proposition and put a specific values on A and B and test it. I don't think you can.”

You are again falling back into circular argument based on semantics (science = empirical), and confusing empirical with all science.

3.
“What? No, I don't believe there are set optima in nature”

It doesn’t matter what you *believe*, the question is whether you can prove my proposition wrong. You haven’t done so.

I logically prove it right thus: if it were wrong, it would mean we can indefinitely increase production by increasing the one factor, which we can’t.

If anyone can do so, give a specific example; or admit the proposition.

Thus you have either affirmed my propositions are right, or not been able to refute them. All else you have said is merely debating the semantics of the word “science” - circular; irrelevant.

“Science needs some sort of empiricism and testing.”

No it doesn’t. What empirical testing do you do of Pythagoras’s theorem? Surveyors don’t “test” whether trigonometry applies or doesn’t apply to the landscape they are surveying. If it doesn’t apply, it means they’re doing it wrong.

Pythagoras' theorem is mathematics. I have been told on many occasions that mathematics is not 'science'. You don't employ statistics to it that's true, but there are more appropriate ways of testing the proposition. And has been tested and proven. Pythagoras' theorem has nothing to do with what you are proposing.

As for your No. 2s I see you mean A to be whatever you want it to be and B can be whatever you want to be at any given time. Some humans can prefer any given A to any given B at any given time, however this is far from being a 'universal'. I may prefer A today, or at least pretend to, but that doesn't make it 'universal'.

Surveyors test whether trigonometry applies all the time, every time they perform a real world calculation in fact. The very fact that nowadays they don't need to question the validity of the calculations shows the strength of the theory behind what they do.

I can see that you think that you can deduce human action through universal axioms somewhat akin to mathematics, but you haven't shown the slightest hint that this could be true.

Trying to assert that my argument is false does not make yours true.

In the interests of dealing with reality, could you perhaps regale us with a real world universal 'A' and 'B'?

Or perhaps a logically derived axiom from the first three that you believe to be true?

Oh and I noticed that you didn't talk about the constraints bit either, I'll take that as an admission that constraints are what you were actually talking about.

See, this logical stuff is easy when you don't play by the rules of reality.

<< Sorry Ludwig, dousing yourself in liquid Teflon is not going to work.>>

You lost me there spindoc. Me no comprehende that.

Hey, I tried to address your weird request, which really is the equivalent of wanting someone to justify in great mathematical detail why 1+1=2, from someone who insists that 1+1=7, but you just rejected my perfectly good response with the most unbelievable reply.

You wrote:

<< Medical Science and the mapping of genomes is simply a scientific process that increases our medical knowledge. >>

No way in the world!!

There is obviously no point in me attempting to respond further to your request, as you would just reject out of hand anything I wrote!

If you truly believe that science and economics are entirely separate, and that the only relationship between the two is when economics exploits scientific discoveries and advances, then you must have an entirely different definition in your head to me of what science is.

So let’s explore the definitions.

Looking at the Wiktionary definitions (which is no doubt just one set of definitions amongst many):

Science:

1. A particular discipline or branch of learning, especially one dealing with measurable or systematic principles rather than intuition or natural ability.

2. The collective discipline of study or learning acquired through the scientific methods; the sum of knowledge gained from such methods and discipline

Economics:

The study of resource allocation, distribution and consumption; of capital and investment; and of management of the factors of production.

continued

You’ll note here that there is nothing in the science definition about the motivation for science. It CAN be done with economic motivations and still be science!

Neither is there anything in the economics definition to exclude science from the study or discipline of economics. Economics CAN include science, without it being devious or exploitative.

So there is nothing in these definitions that suggest that these two disciplines should be considered to be entirely separate.

Perhaps you can find different definitions which do.

In the end it comes down to what the majority of people consider science and economics to be. Like so many of our everyday terms, their definitions, and peoples’ perception of them, is very vague and highly variable. But having said that, I doubt very much whether there are many people who hold the position that you are presenting in this discussion, nor anything like it.