================= HES POSTING ================= 
 
[This message was originally posted on Feb 13, 1997, but not received by 
some members of the list. It is being resent so that everyone has a chance 
to read it. -- HB] 
 
 
I do not really know what to make of Bruce Caldwell's editorial. But before 
letting it pass silently, here are some rather incoherent thoughts 
triggered by 
it:: 
 
> 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. 
 
I can think of a link from SSK to economics, but it goes from Barry Barnes 
concept of a social institution to von Mises disussion of the nature of 
money. 
Do we really want to count the recent Economics of Economics under the 
label of 
sociology? 
 
> 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. 
 
These arguments on  self-referentiality are normally laboured by the 
critics 
of SSK (Steve Woolgar etc). I do not see a compelling reason why any 
serious 
SSK study should adopt such "introspective sollipsism". So, a fortiori: why 
should we as 
historians of economics want to go that way? 
 
> 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. 
(...) 
> Every decade or so, historians of thought hit upon an 
> individual whose work gets a huge, indeed an inordinate, 
> amount of attention. Why? 
 
If the discipline applied Kuhn's paradigms, or Lakatos' research 
programmes, or Popper, 
how could it at the same time put the individual at the centre of analysis? 
The 
whole movement in the history of science etc was away from these 
"conventional" 
histories and their heroes (men and ideas). It seems that there are at 
least some in our 
field who want to go a similar way. 
 
> 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? 
 
Are we a profession? If we would self-consciously call ourselves a 
discipline 
then we should indeed participate in the debates in the history and 
philosphy 
and sociology etc of science, and make our own contribution. 
 
If, on the other hand, we adhere to our "lost paradise" (the time when 
writing 
on the history of economics was recognised as doing economics) we will of 
course wonder why we should be bothered by Popper, Kuhn and Bloor, and we 
will 
be driven to despair by our inability to convince our fellow economists 
(and 
ourselves) that history is important. And others might wonder why we are at 
least thirty years behind current debates, with our heroic histories. 
 
Matthias Klaes 
__________________________________________________ 
Science Studies Unit              [log in to unmask] 
University of Edinburgh     Fax (+44) 131/650 6886 
 
============ FOOTER TO HES POSTING ============ 
For information, send the message "info HES" to [log in to unmask]