On relevance to the history of economics. Economics deals with human  
behavior in a limited realm, and the scientific understanding of human  
nature through time is surely relevant to the history of economics.  
  
Hammond's review ends with:  
Theirs is a worthy effort to recover some of the understanding of human   
nature that was lost in the nineteenth and twentieth century romance   
with science.  
  
Hammond's notion that there was some primal understanding of human nature  
that was "lost" due to science or "romance with science" is what I find hard  
to swallow. To focus on the issue at hand, consider the effects of nature  
(i. e., heredity)   
and nurture (everything else) on human nature. Surely even early efforts  
such as Galton's "Hereditary Genius" ("genius" is dominated by nature over  
nurture) usually represent an advance in knowledge over what was known  
previously, and in fact, a modified form of Galton's view represents the  
scientific consensus today.   
  
That early economists such as Mill had an exaggerated view of the  
malleability of human nature doesn't affect their conclusions much since  
they were operating at a fairly coarse level of analysis. When you examine  
more detailed economic phenomena, especially on a world-wide comparative  
basis, the defects of "analytical egalitarianism" as a basis of analysis  
show up.  
  
Albert Himoe