Since I unwittingly provoked this discussion, I have attentively followed   
it. In all innocence I had expected a few confident responses to give me   
some guidance in dealing with anti-historical attitudes among economists   
here at Harvard. (I should make it clear, I am in the History department.)  
   
But now I am more confused than I was in the first place. Many of the   
responses boil down to indignation, which I share, but which is no good in   
arguing with very smart (even if misguided) colleagues. Others seem to   
confirm my own sense that the problem is, historians and other thoughtful   
social scientists want to understand things as fully as they can, therefore   
in questions of economic thought past or present study not only explicit   
statements or arguments or functions or formulae, but also and especially   
assumptions, premises, unconscious vectors or trajectories in the thought,   
which means their understanding tends to the specific, dated, and   
particular (although it may move to syntheses), whereas the anti-historical   
types want (aside from careerism) simply to transform all questions into   
equations and solve them, as generally as possible, whatever an equation's   
use or reliability in dealing with particular or general realities. In   
short, the errors of past economists might largely lie more in their   
premises than in their reasoning, so that a history that included the study   
of their premises could actually explain what they got right and what they   
got wrong, show why they got it right or wrong, which might well make such   
study useful for critical analysis of contemporary economics, or economic   
discussions. Studying the history of economic thought at least tacitly as   
the history error in economics would (at least) sharpen the critical skills   
for detecting false or faulty assumptions, essential in any contemporary   
economic debate.  
  
Does this (from someone not an economist but very interested in economics)   
make any sense?  
  
John Womack