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From:
[log in to unmask] (David Mitch)
Date:
Fri Mar 31 17:18:35 2006
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----------------- HES POSTING ----------------- 
 
Just a few further footnotes to Bruce Caldwell's reply on the source of the 
Hayek quotation. 
 
1)I think it of interest to note that the Hayek volume cited indicates that 
"The Dilemma of Specialization" in which the quote appears was originally a 
lecture delivered at the celebration of the 25th anniversary of the opening 
of the Social Sciences Research building of the University of Chicago. It 
also may be of interest to some to note that this piece concludes on p.132 
with a tribute to John Nef and to "some such institution as our chairman 
[i.e., Nef] has so devotedly and judiciously striven to provide with his 
pathbreaking conception of the Committee on Social Thought." 
 
The thought occurs to me that perhaps Hayek was suggesting that the 
"economist who is only an economist [and] is likely to become a nuisance if 
not a positive danger" tended to be located on the 4th floor of the Social 
Sciences building, i.e. in the Economics department in which Hayek could 
not get an appointment, in distinction from those such as Hayek and Nef 
whose appointments were in the Committee on Social Thought (located on the 
5th Floor in my days at Chicago in the 1970s). But this is admittedly 
conjecture on my part. 
 
2)I recall when I was auditing Milton Friedman's Price Theory course at 
Chicago in the early 1970's that he also made a statement in class to the 
effect that "he [sic] cannot be a good economist who is only an economist" 
and that Friedman attributed the statement to Alfred Marshall. I think I 
recall coming across a statement to this effect some years later in 
Marshall's writings, but I can't recall just where. 
 
David Mitch 
 
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