Meteorology will be an exact science when the practitioner can predict weather 100% of the time. Ditto for trading. Prediction is required. If you are looking for "exact science", then Newtonian Physics before the time of Einstein might be a better analogy. The term "exact" has no business being used in the same breath, sentence, or possibly even the same paragraph as the word 'trading' and have no commonality IMO.
This is a friendly response. Most of the financial industry agrees with you and will continue to do so for quite a long time. This is the CW of the financial industry. There is a good chance that the financial industry standards grew out of a long standing inductive process and that led to a belief system such as you describe in terms of Newtonian physics. Differential and integral calculus had different roots and they merged successfully. Newton on one side and Leibnitz on the other. In effect, Newton was good enough for the area of apples and most engineering problems. Atoms and molecules looked cool for chemists and biologists too. Before 1960, I was induced to study Theoretical Physics with a collection of instructors drawn from the leading advanced studies of the time. Newton was out and we more than often used translations of Russian texts at that time. wha happened was simply that subatomic considerations were what awas most important and the maths were attuned to the science. These sturies were purported to be important for the next breakthroughs in computers. Today it looks like teenagers are dong the breakthroughs and their focus is on coding with non APL languages. I think there was an effort in the financial industry to use physists to work on financial data. That may be where your particular orientation came from. You orientation is the Conventional Wisdom. I fully appreciate your required breathing exercise on the word spacing that you do. I feel that you believe what you say and you have the right to pass your orientation on to others. the basis is that it is simply correct and you have you proofs made in the maths you chose to use as the basis. My orientation to the markets is different than yours. What I like most about my relation and experience to markets is that I have looked at both your orientation and my orientation. For me, trading is an exact science. I do not believe most people can agree with me. I believe they use their standard to draw conclusions about my orientation. I see these conclusions and I consider the paths that have been chosen by these CW based folks to get to these firm unwavering conclusions. This is terrific. Most people come into trading with a bias toward the CW since it is what is the pulse and heart beat of the financial industry. At this point I have watched it for over half a century. CW is definitely embedded and here to stay as the main theme. As you say Newton was first and founded a tradition for molecular and atomic physics. He could have not solved the British Miner problem even though subatomic particles were not involved. He could not figure out the causal difference between and egg and a chick emerging from an egg. Others did and they were not subatomic particle specialists to speak of. In another thread a person embarked on a dead end trip by using independent binary variables to detemine and unlike kind binary target. Too bad for him, because he correctly stated the problem and incorrectly applied a process that will not work. What he did get, however was a first look at the problem. CW is closed to the problem and looking at the problem becuase they chose to. This is common in science. You can go to the movies and watch everyone, including Lo (MIT) who gets science grants to study TS, stay in the CW orientation. (Go see "Inside Job"). My non CW view is that prediction is not part of trading as determined by deductive reasoning. As peculiar as it sounds, all trading is only done in the Present, and up to the Present is all that is required for actually trading. The backup corroborating solution to this non inductive viewpoint is found in the general solution to riddle of induction (paranetrically achieved).
It is good to keep the fear alive until you have the capability of doing some reasoning. the reasoning is added to your 3x5 cards. you definitely do not knoe how to read volume, so lets give it a try as you work your way through 1 bar on cycle 1 of 10 cyclews of trading. The mind needs to have a few locations in it where there is long term memory. to get those psots you do repeated efforts until, at night your unconscious short term memory stuff goes to locations where spots are building long term memory. recently I have posted repeatedly about volume on a bar in detail. you have read it an put it on the 3x5 cards along side the other nodal information on that card. It didn't stick by reading then writing and using the 3x5 cards as you do the pdf's which do not work on ET. You can maintain your freak out fear for as long as you wish.