A contrast between archival histories versus living inheritance may provide  
   an analogy to see two different approaches to history of ideas. First, out  
   of sheer curiosity, we may visit a museum or archive and wonder at the stone  
   arrows and wooden shoes or look at papyrus documents and such things.  And  
   surely, there is demand for archives.  
  
   However, we may also be living in the houses our forefathers built, and  
   there, we may be looking for things that are still useful, out of pressing  
   need to solve problems of our day. And we may be trying to find flaws that  
   make the house less than ideal living quarters.  
  
   My  preference  is the second category: to take history of ideas as an  
   inheritance that we are apt to use in our day.  
  
   A philosopher may exist only as a surreal entity, his muse forever moving  
   the cursor from something to its precursors in his museum, and his digits  
   forever dusting old dictionaries and manuscripts. And we may not learn much  
   from the museum visitor or the archival bookworm about solving the problem  
   of our day.  
  
   Philosophers will be amused by the indifference to their contributions as  
   shown by students of science. The development of a science is the work of  
   its scientists and not by philosophers. I do not know which grand idea of  
   economics or solution of a tricky economic puzzle came from philosophers. Is  
   there a philosopher, for example, who could show how to connect prices and  
   payments to entrepreneurship, and then put it in a model to become a part of  
   economic science? And I have yet to find a politician who has provided much  
   useful scientific insight for economists.  
  
   I  think  it  is the other way round.  I am sure Adam smith was also a  
   philosopher, certainly of moral philosophy, but I am surer that he has  
   inspired  philosophy  by being an economist. I am saying that Smith as  
   economist  is  the  bigger  source of inspiration compared to Smith as  
   philosopher.  
  
   And I think that economic science has lent much to politics and has borrowed  
   little back from it. Amartya Sens notion of entitlement for example ought to  
   be a major element in a new political philosophy. Even Arrows Impossibility  
   Theorem has helped politicians get clearer notions of voting choices.  And I  
   will not recite what Keynes said about who and what matters.  
  
   So, I would  much rather stick to my inheritance, and worry less about old  
   dictionaries and precursors, but by golly, write a new dictionary and create  
   a new and improved version of old things. I would much rather greet the  
   living  economic scientists than be taking a lonely walk in a cemetery  
   reading epitaphs. Of course it remains a possibility that I may retire and  
   being unable to do any more work visit the cemetery to carry on a one-way  
   conversation with the dead. A philosopher at last, sighing in loneliness,  
   amazed still that the dead have left traces that they were once alive. On  
   that day, I may even congratulate myself for being somewhat holy, the word  
   meaning nearly dead.  
  
   Hope you all stay alive long, and philosophize only after I am gone out of  
   reach of the curious cursor.  
  
   M Gani