Steve Levitt:
There could be no two disciplines closer than evolutionary biology and economics. They study different questions and they use different methods, but the way that evolutionary biologists think is exactly like the way that economists think. Both are very much a model of behavior, of individual behavior, and individual behavior that’s motivated by costs and benefits. The other thing is that at its heart, both economics and evolutionary biology strive for simplicity. The simplest story which can explain a set of facts is the one we gravitate to. As opposed to other disciplines. History, history is all about complexity. And you know, literature is all about complexity. Even sociology I think at heart is about complexity. But economics is about simplicity.
I love this quote from the recent Freakonomics podcast. Why We Get Sick and Survival of The Sickest have been two of my favorite books forever. The darwinian approach to medicine is very logical which makes it easy to appreciate for any economist.
Mathematics and design should be included in this group as well. There’s a beauty and elegance in simplicity that drew me to these disparate fields.