Niloufar Sobhanian

My Renaissance
After completing my pre-requisites for pharmacy school, I have decided to pursue an
undergraduate degree in business in order to understand a different perspective in regards to
medicine how it is related to business. As a licensed pharmacy technician, I realize how
important of a role the cost of the medications is, sometimes disabling patients from purchasing
their medications; what good is the diagnosis if the cure is unaffordable? I realized the role of
pharmaceutical companies and how they provide coupons for certain medications to be free for a
trial period. My pharmacist manager constantly has to worry about the price of the medications
for patients even though his specialty is to know the relationship between the medicine and body
systems as well as the interactions with other medications. It quickly became apparent how he
was not taught about the business aspect of medicine nor the economics side that he has to deal
with these issues on a daily basis.
I had taken human physiology and anatomy courses in the previous semester before
starting my business studies, the science courses were conceptual and visualization helped me be
successful in the class. It was ironic that I had to picture the physiology mechanisms which is
difficult to imagine sodium and potassium pump which seemed to be unrealistic is in fact, very
real. Physiology is pure science, the concepts that are taught are drawn from experiments that are
conducted, by definition, it is pure science. When I had started my business courses, especially
this class, foundations of business, visualization was not necessary, the concepts applied directly
to how business functions by relating it to real, every day life transactions.

Niloufar Sobhanian
This course awakened my analytic abilities even more. One of the concepts that stood out
was critical thinking, discussing critical thinking helped shape my entire perspective of how to
be successful in this course. It was to break down pieces and analyze pieces in order to detect
error without any previous bias. The ethics conversation that we had as a class, helped in
broadening my perspective and think deeply about a career in business as well as question my
understandings after we read about religion, politics and how they are all related to business.
We live in a more conservative state where the topics of religion and its discussion is
considered to be a bold, some might even argue, a taboo topic. These discussions truly made me
have a renaissance in my perspective, it felt more liberating compared to my other courses were
the professor lectures for the class period, this classs structure is set up to force us to think
critically and to participate. The topic that had the most impact however, was Why Is
Economics Not An Evolutionary Science by Thorstein Veblen.
In this article, Veblen argues that economics has not yet been caught up to other
branches such as biology, chemistry and medicine. The theories from decades ago are still
practiced today, he states: They have given a narrative survey of phenomena, not a genetic
amount of an unfolding process. In this work they have, no doubt, achieved results of permanent
value; but the results achieved are scarcely to be classed as economic theory. Veblen discusses
how economic theories are difficult to be proven. By having the same data every time, economy
changes with time due to demand and supply of the consumer, some things cannot even be
predicted such as the stock market.
The article has made me think more deeply about what economics really
is. I have lived in 3 countries before and numerous states but sciences such as physics, math,
biology and chemistry do not differ between continents, the formulas are the same, there is an

Niloufar Sobhanian
international metric system. However, the methods of business differ between the countries. For
example, in Iran, there are places such as bazaars that people go often, to shop, socialize and
merchants know that their businesses survival is contingent on successfully advertising their
products in these bazaars. In the United States, people seek more convenience, especially in
todays world, online shopping is now more in demand than ever.
Veblens statement is true to a certain degree. economics is not an
empirical science; it is a social science. The concept of business, marketing and economy has a
set of standards on its own. Marketing focuses on the psychology aspect of making people feel as
if they NEED a certain product, business is a method of maximizing profit and economics is
contingent on how well businesses are functioning, prominently the law of supply and demand.
Veblen is correct in stating that economics is not a science, its theories are
old, however, it is evolving, businesses evolve with time in order to be successful, the definition
of science according to Merriam Webster dictionary is knowledge about or study of the natural
world based on facts learned through experiments and observation and I do believe that
economy is learned through experiments and observation, thus even though it is not the
traditional definition of science, it is however, a science on its own.