academic disciplines are in fact highly contingent in their development, and that there is no reason to expect convergence around a single “best” version of the discipline. The history of disciplines should better be understood in analogy to the brachiation and differentiation associated with the evolution of species and sub-species over time — lots of contingency, with a consequent specialization of the intermediate results to the demands of a particular point in time. This implies that a discipline like sociology or political science could have developed very differently, with substantially different ideas about research questions and methods.
I take the view that economics evolved in the wrong direction in the United States, particularly following the second World War, as it followed down the path laid out by Paul Samuelson. Some of my thoughts on this are expressed in Specialization and Trade. More thoughts are on the way in a long essay.
You are right, Samuelson the Keynesian equilibriumist, with excellent words and being a technical expert, pushed the analogy of the economy like a GDP factory.
With economists as (highly paid!) advisors to the decision makers of the GDP factory.