What's wrong with numbers alone?

It's really rooted in ideology -- more specifically, the desire to make the numbers fit the ideology, rather than the other way around, as it should be.  But I do agree with you that economics can't rely only on numbers, because the economy is too large and complex (and constantly changing) to rely only on numbers.  You can draw all sorts of conclusions from using just numbers.  What separates the great economists from the Neoliberal Hallucinationists is the ability to look at the numbers, combine the analysis with solid intuition, and provide some general predictions on outcomes.  (The best ones, with the possible exception of Keynes, think of great analogies to explain their ideas.  Paul Krugman is incredibly talented at this.)

Conservatives want live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers. - George Carlin