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An issue similar to that raised by Kevin Quin seems to come up about once a year on the
list. And my comment is more or less the same every time. For the newcomers, let me just
briefly reiterate my view that it is illogical to evaluate a history of anything without
defining the thing that the history is about. Thus, for example, to speak of thin and
thick histories of economics as if these concepts ("thin" and "thick") have some stand-
alone meaning strikes me as a misdirect. It distracts our attention away from the
fundamental issue, namely, that economics must be defined before one can make a reasoned
judgment about whether a particular history of it is "good" or "bad."
 
It seems to me that if I claim to be an historian of economics without carefully defining
economics, I cannot expect to be taken seriously by an audience that uses reason, as
opposed to emotion, to choose their fields of study.
 
If this is the state of our art, then perhaps it is just as well that other professional
economists don't pay much attention to the modern historians of economic thought. Who
needs emotion in graduate economics education?
 
Pat Gunning 
Feng Chia University, Taiwan 
 
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