These economists love aggrandizing each other by referring to each other's work as "magnum opuses" and "tour de force", similar to handing out their faux nobel prize annually to the trendy economist of the moment. It is all part of their attempt to try to legitimise their vague beliefs as science.
I suppose agreeing on terminology and collecting past historical data are crucial steps in developing a science. Historically collecting good data in economics has been painstakingly slow, especially in large scales. Maybe the field will move forward soon towards better explanations.
I have no problem with the fact that human understanding is incomplete. What bugs me is that economic models of questionable utility are taken as gospel in politics and used as a battering ram - "because science told us to".
