"Such uninformed essentialist proclamations", be they
what they are, do have a bearing on the history of Economics.
The kind of "theorizing in the abstract" to which Medaille
refers is not the kind of theory with which the practice of
Economics begins.
Practice in Economics begins with a complex situation
that is troublesome. It tries to abstract the elements that bear on
the trouble in an attempt to find a way to eliminate them.
It is only as an after thought that the entailed abstraction is
elevated to universal and eternal validity. This process of
transmogrification from the here and now to the everywhere and
forever may be warranted, but I conjecture that usually it is not.
This is a recurring development in the history of
Economics.
Robin Neill