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Date: | Fri Mar 31 17:19:17 2006 |
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================= HES POSTING =================
I'm afraid I'm not completely convinced by Roy's remarks that we
can so easily seperate out contributions to contemporary economics
and contributions to the history of economics. As I argued in
my recent HES paper, much of the advance of current Darwinian biology
takes place in the context of historical discussions. There can
hardly be a more significant contribution to Darwinian biology over
that last 30 years than Michael Ghiselin's _The Economy of Nature and
the Evolution of Sex_, but this book is in many ways an historical
study. Similarly, in the debates at the "High Table" in evolutionary
biology, historical narratives that contribute simultaneously to
the history of biology and contemporary biology are often at the cutting
edge of both the history of biology and the advance of biology. The
work of Ernst Mayr, David Hull, Nils Eldridge, and Michael Ruse comes
immediately to mind. Within the area of economics I am most familiar with
-- one of the most intellectually energized and progressive within all
of economics -- Austrian economics, in which the mixing of historical study
and contemporary contributions to economics is quite typical, as it is
in the energized world of Darwinian biology. As just three recent examples
I might mention Frank Machovec's _Perfect Competition and the Transformation
of Economics_, Karen Vaughn's _Austrian Economics in America_, and
Esteban Thomsen's _Prices & Knowledge_. So within perhaps the most
intellectually energized area of contemporary theoretical economics Roy's
remarks don't apply very convincingly, nor so in the core of biological
science. I would have to think more about what this means for Roy's wider
remarks about the value of establishing the history of economics within
departments of history or history of science programs.
Greg Ransom
Dept. of Philosophy
UC-Riverside
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http://members.gnn.com/logosapien/ransom.htm
My HES paper can be read at:
http://members.gnn.com/logosapien/hayekmyth.htm
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