Sam Bostaph wrote:  
        "I suspect that any good medical school has to do the same thing.  After all,
there is more than one current "theory" of medicine.  For example, medical doctors study
within one context, doctors of osteopathy within another.  That's why they have different
teaching hospitals."
           
        I respectfully disagree. It is commonly known [and I know this from personal
experiences of young people of my acquaintance] that osteopathy is chosen mostly by
aspiring doctors who cannot easily get into 'regular' medical schools. After graduation
and residency, their goal is to be mainstreamed as quickly as possible. The dominant
paradigm is still as that prevailing in the medical system. Also, I believe there are
different medical schools, but not teaching hospitals.
  
           
        "This way of approaching a subject is so fundamental that any good principles of
economics textbook begins with some discussion of the way in which economists think about
the world and how that differs from thinkers in other subjects."
  
        I don't see how discussing economists' way of thinking as different from other
thinkers or disciplines answers the question of how or why economists differ among
themselves about how to approach economic matters. If anything, it reinforces the
abstract, deductive and mostly context-free method of current economics.
  
  
        "Anyone arrogant enough to assert that the history of their subject is of no
importance is, to put it bluntly, a fool who possesses neither an education nor the spirit
of intellectual inquiry.  They should be kept away from students."
           
        If this were all there was to it, we would not be having a discussion about why
history of economics matters or why it is suffering a slow death in academia, would we?
           
Sumitra Shah