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I have not had an opportunity to read Fetter's piece, as Bert Mosselmans 
recommends, but I suspect that the thrust of the argument is that before 
one can make a judgment about the study of the history of economics, one 
ought to have a reasonably clear definition of economics. If this is not 
what Fetter says, it is what he should say. Roy Weintraub suggests that the 
history of economics should adhere to the norms of historical scholarship 
in general. Yet if economics is different from physics, this reasoning is 
incomplete. He would seem to be putting the cart before the horse. 
 
One may reply by saying that discussions of the meaning of economics are 
themselves part of the history of economic doctrines, or of economic 
analysis. But such a reply suggests that the historians of economics ought 
to study people who claim to be, or who are judged to be, economists. The 
alternative, which seems more reasonable to me, is that historians of 
economics ought to study thoughts about a particular field of thought or 
knowledge. But before this can be done, they must identify that field. If 
it is no different from other fields of thought or knowledge, then they can 
proceed as the historians of other fields have done. But if it differs, 
they may have to adopt different methods. 
 
There is, of course, no way to avoid making judgments when one sets out to 
study the history of economics. The question is whether such initial 
judgments ought to be about (1) the meaning of the field of economics or 
about (2a) whose claims that they are economists or (2b) whose judgments 
about which people are economists ought to be accepted. 
 
It may appear that (1) and (2) are similar. It is true that if one has made 
a firm judgment about (1), one is prepared to make judgments about (2). But 
the reverse is not necessarily true. I may judge that the claims of people 
I regard as neoclassical economists (Marxian economists, Austrian 
economists) are more legitimate without ever taking up the issue of how 
economics ought to be defined. 
 
So I argue: let's define economics before we begin to talk about what 
historians of economics ought to do. 
 
Pat Gunning 
National Chung Hsing University 
 
http://stsvr.showtower.com.tw/~gunning/welcome 
 
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