> Economists take the spherical cow as, if not the current state of cow-dom, the perfected nature of cows and what cows would be if they got to make the rules.

Well, sure in a way, but that includes the parts that lay people ignore like the perfect information element and perfect value optimizing decisionmaking of the rational actor model, and the absence of externalities. But most economists recognize that people aren't omniscient, don't always optimally apply the information they so have, and that you can't avoid econonicndecisions having impacts on people other than those voluntarily participating in them.

Far fewer economists (basically, just the Chicago/Austrian schools, the latter of which does so as pretty overtly an article of faith) think that if you can't magically handwave those elements of the model into reality, the rest of 101-level simplified regulation-free markets still remains desirable as an ideal.

I'm not really sure I understand what you are trying to say here.

The almost purely "logical" and "ideological" statements of 19th and early-to-mid 20th century economics have been supplanted with with more empirical methods.

You know the supply and demand curves, from Econ 101? How they meet at one point to determine the price of the thing? The demand curve can actually have any shape, so you can have any number of points where the two curves meet, and the supply curve has the problem that a firm making extra things both will and must not change the overall number of things made.

See Debunking Economics by Steve Keen.