Robin Neill wrote:  
>         "Such uninformed essentialist proclamations", be they  
>what they are, do have a bearing on the history of  Economics.  
>  
>         The kind of  "theorizing in the abstract" to which Medaille  
>refers is not the kind of theory with which the practice of  
>Economics begins.  
>  
>         Practice in Economics begins with a complex situation  
>that is troublesome.  It tries to abstract the elements that bear on  
>the trouble in an attempt to find a way to eliminate them.  
>  
>         It is only as an after thought that the entailed abstraction is  
>elevated to universal and eternal validity.  This process of  
>transmogrification from the here and now to the everywhere and  
>forever may be warranted, but I conjecture that usually it is not.  
  
  
Exactly, and that is why the study of history is   
so crucial to a proper study of economics, or   
indeed to any humane science. Human ideas arise   
from a response to particular historical   
circumstances and it is difficult to understand   
them without understanding the cultural milieu   
that produced them. An author advances a   
proposition x in preference to rival propositions   
y and z, and casts his thoughts in a form he   
feels best suited to answer y and z. It is really   
impossible to understand x without understanding   
y and z. Even if x really is a universal   
proposition, it is normally expressed in terms   
that are valid mostly within a particular culture   
or time. Too often students receive economic   
propositions in the form of received and   
ahistorical dogmas that are beyond question. The   
inevitable result is that students lose the   
practice of thinking historically and end up   
trying to fit reality to the dogma rather than   
the dogma to the reality. That is what I mean by theorizing in the abstract.  
  
This is not to say that there are no universals,   
but man reaches the universal only through the   
particular, which is to say through history and culture.  
  
  
John C. Medaille