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   Bruce Caldwell's editorial contains, in my opinion, some very interesting 
points. I feel that ancient economists did do economics when or by doing 
history of economics: indeed, I think that it could be said, without much 
loss of accuracy, that doing economics was not very different from doing 
the 
history of economics (something of this kind goes also for philosophy: 
philosophy is the history of philosophy). As I was reading Caldwell's 
editorial, Marx's case was came to my mind, though many others might also 
serve as examples. This raises a question: why have economics and its 
history fallen apart from each other? 
   I do not know whether a SSK neoclassically-oriented model can explain why 
historians of economics have not adopted a self-referential view; probably 
because self-referentiality would not only be somewhat dull, but also 
sterile. After all, what do we study history of economics for? I think that 
a right answer to this question should stress that we do not study what our 
forerunners said in order to know just what they said, but in order to know 
how things are. I am not sceptic, and I think that the economic classics 
can 
help us to get a better understanding of economic reality; is this not the 
reason why we call them "classics"? No doubt you can get many useful 
insights by studying sociological aspects of an influential community of 
economists, such as the English Classics or the Austrians, but thinking is 
an individual task and must be performed by individual brains. I do not 
know 
if Caldwell's conjecture about the move from "great economist" to "great 
economist" can be proved to be true or false; what I do know is that if a 
thinker has seen something true about economic facts, we can always turn to 
her or him to learn what she or he saw. 
   To a certain extent, economic theorists are not much better off than us 
as far as the connection with reality is concerned. I often hear complains 
about this not only from the laymen, but also from other colleagues who, 
using Caldwell's expression, "are doing economics" (or that which the 
profession regards today as economics -this is neither a fact nor a 
conjecture, but a feeling). However, the complaint that economics is 
increasingly becoming a branch of applied mathematics is also heard 
sometimes among the profession - this second complaint being closely 
related 
to the previous one. When somebody asks me what economic methodology has to 
contribute to economic discussion, I usually point to the problem of 
realism 
of assumptions (with not completely unsatisfactory results). Have we given 
a 
satisfactory answer to this problem?, is it not, after all, a key question 
in modern macroeconomic theorizing? just think of neo-keynesianism, 
checking 
the rational expectations hypothesis (or assumption?), etc. 
   The complaints about the relation between theory and fact show a certain 
dissatisfaction with the way economics is being built today; maybe we can 
provide the profession with insights and ideas from those economists who 
saw 
true things, that is, the classics. If we say things that have some element 
of truth, we would not be forced to persuade others that what we are doing 
is relevant. Maybe we should try not to explain ourselves, but to reflect 
upon ourselves and take steps to view in a fresh way the natural connection 
between economics and its history so prominent in the classics. 
 
   Kepa M Ormazabal 
   Department of Economic Theory 
   University of the Basque Country 
 
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