----------------- HES POSTING ----------------- 
I have much agreement with what Dave Colander says here, although we are sort of co-
conspirators (and occasional coauthors) despite some ongoing disagreements, some on pretty
fundamental matters.
 
Anyway, I guess I will confess a certain sadness, perhaps felt by others such as Mat
Forstater, that Roy Weintraub and his colleagues do not feel that they can oversee the
sort of proper "thick" HE dissertations in their department that are the only sort they
really approve of.  Unlike Dave, I do see usefulness in such thick studies, even if they
do not have some sort of widespread impact.
 
I am not (yet) a member of the HES, and, indeed am not "really" a historian of thought.
It is a sideline for me that I have sort of backed into from doing other stuff, although I
have always enjoyed it since taking a course at the University of Wisconsin in grad school
(Fall 1969) from Nathan Rosenberg.
 
Nevertheless, I guess I'll go ahead and lay out what I see as different ways to do HE,
given that I have actually published a few papers now under such auspices.  I see three.
 
1.  Thick histories a la Weintraub.  These have been described already, and I fully think
they have their place.  As noted above, it is a bit depressing to hear that such
approaches are not acceptable (at Duke at least) as dissertations in economics.
 
2. Thin histories a la Colander.  These are what Weintraub dismisses as "literature
reviews with a longer time horizon."  I suppose that this is what I do also, and Roy has
informed me that what I do is not "really" HE (and I know it is therefore hopeless to
submit any of my papers to HOPE, :-)).
 
However, I think there is another aspect of this that Dave C. did not mention, although I
am definitely sympathetic
with his take on the matter.  I suppose where I am coming from (and how I backed into HE,
so to speak) has to do with a concern with how ideas evolved and at some level the issue
of "proper citation" and "intellectual property rights," concerns that have only become
more intense since I became a journal editor (JEBO).  Thus, I am very interested in such
things as complexity theory, chaos theory, and catastrophe theory.  In writing about these
reasonably current ideas, I have also been concerned to write proper "literature reviews"
of where they came from and how they developed.  In doing so I did not think of myself, at
least not initially, as doing HE.  I was
simply setting the record straight for a variety of reasons.  Then I wake up and discover
that somebody thinks my literature review is "actually HE."  OK, fine.
 
I suppose one aspect of this, not so much the antiquarian one really of "forerunners," but
has to do with intellectual property rights and proper citation. Thus, I have complained
in a book review about Paul Krugman essentially claiming to be the inventor of the "new
economic geography" (something he also pulled with the "new international trade theory"
earlier). Because of his public prominence and access to media, especially to journalists
writing on economics, he manages to get these claims widely circulated and eventually
widely believed.  I write something about the people who preceded him in the 1980s, many
writing in physics or geography journals, who he has assiduously ignored and failed to
cite, even when it has been pointed out to him publicly, which it was by me about ten
years in front of about 100 people at an AEA meeting.  So, in doing such a thing I don't
think of myself as doing HE per se, but then it turns out that maybe it is, if of a thin
sort perhaps.
 
3)  Hermeneutic re-Haruspications of Ancient Texts. This is the sort of public image of
History of Economic Thought, and indeed what many practitioners do.  I am not against such
a thing in principle, although it can easily become repetitious (what? yet another
hermeneutic re-haruspication of Marx, or Hayek, or mabye even Walras or Marshall???).  It
would seem to me that the majority of this is done by self-consciously heterodox
economists who are out to prove (yet again) how wrong the neoclassical establishment is,
if only that establishment would read their explications of this or that ancient text.
 
OTOH, in fact, as is well understood by many of the practitioners, the real audience is
usually mostly similar practitioners who are also focused on the same ancient texts,
although sometimes to score points in modern debates about either policy or methodology
ultimately (Yes!  Once again Hayek shows just how wrong socialist central planning is!!!).
Besides exuding an inevitable air of mustiness, there also arises the danger of descending
into the merely theological.  After all, "hermeneutics" is a term originally used in
regard to interpreting the Bible and other theological texts, and I am reminded of
Skidelsky's remark that the social origins of the British academic economist class is the
former clerical class...  (although I often indulge myself in reading some of the more
interesting of these exercises myself, :-)).
 
Barkley Rosser 
 
------------ FOOTER TO HES POSTING ------------ 
For information, send the message "info HES" to [log in to unmask]