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Explaining Ourselves 
 
Bruce Caldwell 
Department of Economics 
University of North Carolina at Greensboro 
 
I think that historians of thought have recently been falling 
down on the job.  Let me explain myself. 
 
Some of the latest moves within the history of thought - 
methodology - science studies communities appear to be brimming 
with self-referentiality.  The idea that the sociology of 
scientific knowledge (SSK), which itself has made recourse to 
the models of economists, can be used to explain the activities 
of economists, is the principal example that I have in mind. 
 
It may be, though, that this self-referentiality is more 
apparent than real.  Though most of us in the communities 
mentioned above are trained as economists, very few of us 
actually DO economics (just ask your colleagues).  If we really 
want to explore the issues (and experience the discomfort) of a 
truly self-referential examination, we should turn the tools 
and lenses of SSK (or rhetorical analysis, or whatever) on 
ourselves, on, that is, our activities as historians of 
thought. 
 
(An aside: I suspect some variant of neoclassically-oriented 
SSK can explain why we haven't done this yet; since it involves 
the tiny community of historians writing about historians for 
historians, there is no audience for it, so as far as 
professional self-interest goes, it's not rational to do it. 
But perhaps a Post-Keynesian or Hayekian SSK which disavows 
rational economic man could "rationalize" delving into the 
question I want to ask.) 
 
Anyway, if we did this, what would there be to explain?  One 
obvious candidate is our importation from other disciplines of 
ways of representing intellectual history.  We read Kuhn and 
went in search of paradigms (or, if we were heterodox, of 
anamolies and signs of paradigm shifts).  We read Lakatos and 
identified research programmes. We read Popper and looked for 
crucial experiments. (No wonder we stopped reading him!)  We 
read Booth or Bloor or Hacking or... well, you get the point. 
 
I have ideas about why we do this, and about how an explanation 
of such behavior might turn out.  But what I'd like to propose 
is another, I think more interesting, aspect of our behavior for 
exploration.  The "stylized fact" (about how we have gone about 
doing the history of thought) that I'd like to have explained 
is the following: 
 
Every decade or so, historians of thought hit upon an 
individual whose work gets a huge, indeed an inordinate, 
amount of attention. Why? 
 
This "fact" (conjecture, really: I have not "tested" it with a 
citation search) is based on the following impressionistic 
reading of our history.  Around the turn of the century Smith 
scholarship appeared to take off.  In the 1930s it was Marx. 
In the 50s and 60s it was Ricardo (this might have happened 
earlier had Sraffa not been - was it Keynes who said it - "the 
most leisured man" he'd ever met).  In the 70s and into the 80s, 
it was Keynes of course. In the 90s, Hayek, or Morgenstern (or 
even von Neumann or Wald - to point out some interesting leaps 
"outside" of our discipline) might end up being candidates. 
 
Now certainly one can dispute the conjecture.  But if it has 
at least some truth in it, why does it happen?  Supply side 
explanantions (e.g., the opening of archives, discoveries of 
lost texts, the publication of a collected writings) surely 
play a role, one would think.  But is there something deeper 
here?  In particular, why is it that the work of certain 
economists seem to resonate during certain periods of time? 
Just to cite the  example I'm most familiar with, Hayek appeals 
to a broad array of economists because 1) they endorse or 
detest his views on the economy, 2) his writings can be 
interpreted as having some connection with contemporary 
interests (e.g., such diverse groups as realists, those in 
search of "post-modern moments", and those interested in 
complexity theory all have cause to mention him), and 3) he 
lived a long time and was in contact with (usually in 
disagreement with) a huge assortment of influential economists. 
 
Well, my goal in raising these issues is simply to stimulate 
some discussion. Let me end this fanciful mid-Winter thought 
experiment more formally by posing a few questions: 
 
1. Is the conjecture (that as a profession there is a tendency 
for us to move from "great economist" to "great economist") 
true?  If so, what accounts for it? 
 
2. Are there other patterns?  More generally, are there other 
"stylized facts" about our behavior as historians that might 
need explanation? 
 
3. Finally, how do interpretive communities like ours decide 
what, or whom, we will interpret? 
 
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