Kevin Quinn's comments lead me to what is true, I think, in political   
science (my field).  Part of studying the history is to discover why   
we are asking today the questions we are asking in the way that we   
are asking them; and, reciprocally, is to discern what questions and   
answers are being ignored (and perhaps to ask, why?)  
  
At a most superficial level, I -- who frequently teach Adam Smith's   
Wealth of Nations in a modern political philosophy course -- am   
struck by how Smith, who recognizes the need for government and the   
role it plays in structuring the market and taking care of market   
failures (such as grinding poverty, ignorance, and dissension), seems   
to have no theoretical sense of how to link what he says about   
government to what he says about human action (human nature? human   
propensities?) in the social and economic realm.   (I am also,   
obviously, struck by how many of Smith's concerns in Book V seem to   
have been ignored by many later economists who claim him as a   
forebear.)  
  
Peter G. Stillman