Since I unwittingly provoked this discussion, I have attentively followed
it. In all innocence I had expected a few confident responses to give me
some guidance in dealing with anti-historical attitudes among economists
here at Harvard. (I should make it clear, I am in the History department.)
But now I am more confused than I was in the first place. Many of the
responses boil down to indignation, which I share, but which is no good in
arguing with very smart (even if misguided) colleagues. Others seem to
confirm my own sense that the problem is, historians and other thoughtful
social scientists want to understand things as fully as they can, therefore
in questions of economic thought past or present study not only explicit
statements or arguments or functions or formulae, but also and especially
assumptions, premises, unconscious vectors or trajectories in the thought,
which means their understanding tends to the specific, dated, and
particular (although it may move to syntheses), whereas the anti-historical
types want (aside from careerism) simply to transform all questions into
equations and solve them, as generally as possible, whatever an equation's
use or reliability in dealing with particular or general realities. In
short, the errors of past economists might largely lie more in their
premises than in their reasoning, so that a history that included the study
of their premises could actually explain what they got right and what they
got wrong, show why they got it right or wrong, which might well make such
study useful for critical analysis of contemporary economics, or economic
discussions. Studying the history of economic thought at least tacitly as
the history error in economics would (at least) sharpen the critical skills
for detecting false or faulty assumptions, essential in any contemporary
economic debate.
Does this (from someone not an economist but very interested in economics)
make any sense?
John Womack
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