You can't use the word "prediction" if you're unwilling to make a distinction between the past and future.
Otherwise, the whole field of astronomy wouldn’t be possible, as it by its nature is all about observing the past, and building models to explain and predict other events that happened in the past. If you grant that astronomy is a scientifically sound pursuit, why is astronomy observing and testing their theories on events that happened thousands or millions year ago in another galaxy fine, but observing and testing econometric theories on events that happened hundreds or thousands years ago make no sense? How is archeology, or ancient population genetics supposed to work, if you only allow scientific method to be applied to future events?
You've also made bizarre arguments elsewhere in this thread. Apparently Malthus can't be proven wrong because the Earth can't support an infinite number of people. That's true, of course, but it's not a model. It's the statement of an obvious fact.
We can, and we do, just not for human population in future. Again, Malthusian models are completely standard way to model past human populations, and also animal populations.
> Apparently Malthus can't be proven wrong because the Earth can't support an infinite number of people. That's true, of course, but it's not a model. It's the statement of an obvious fact.
Yes, that's why Malthusian model is so popular: because it is obviously correct, and because its assumptions cover very wide range of observed past and future conditions. We live in pretty unique circumstances when they don't: we both had the technology grow carrying capacity faster than the population had grown, and also we had population growth slow down a lot, and then go down to shrinking regime.
I expect these trends to continue in my lifetime, and probably in the lifetime of my children -- but not forever. Instead, I believe that in around 200-300 years we will return to high-fertility regime, that will require governmental measures to curb, if we want to preserve the quality of life. However, I have much less confidence in this prediction than I do in the validity of Malthusian model.
