If it's not too late to come back to this thread, I would like to  
contribute the following passage from the opening paragraph of Lionel  
Robbin's *The Theory of Economic Policy* (Macmillan, 1952 pp 1-2)  
which I have just come across.  
  
"When I began to study economics, thirty years ago, the senior  
generation of economists in this country -- Marshall, Edgeworth,  
Foxwell, Cannan -- were all men who, in their different ways, were  
truly learned in what may be called the scholarship of the subject;  
and some acquaintance with the history of economic thought was usually  
deemed to be a desirable part of the equipment of the economist. But,  
in the years that have passed since then, all that has changed. In  
most centres of study, this kind  of knowledge has come to be regarded  
as a very unimportant embellishment, as inessential to the economist  
as a knowledge of the history of chemistry is said to be inessential  
to the chemist. This development has always seemed to me to be  
unfortunate. I do not think that, even in the purely analytical field,  
our knowledge is so far advanced as to justify us in writing off as  
superseded the proposition of all but our immediate contemporaries;  
and, in the applied field, I do not think that we can hope to  
understand the problems and policies out of which they grew. I suspect  
that damage has been done, not merely to historical and speculative  
culture, but also to our practical insight, by this indifference to  
our intellectual past -- this provincialism in time -- which has become  
so characteristic of our particular branch of social studies."  
  
If a study of the history of the history of economics ever develops,  
Robbin's perspective will need to be a feature.  
  
Steve Kates