As always, Anthony Waterman injects a healthy dosis of (historical) perspective and fine analysis to the discussion. The distinction between HET as Intellectual History (IH) and History of Economic Analysis (HEA--understood by Mark Blaug as 'Economic Theory in Retrospect) is a useful one.  But it leaves out too many options. (For example, in recent work Blaug has moved to an interesting mix of IH and HEA.) As I point out in my contribution to the (forthcoming, JHET) symposium on ?The Future of the History of Economics: Young Scholars? Perspective? (organized by Paola Tubaro and Erik Angner), ?Philosophy and a Scientific Future of the History of Economics,? there are at least two further options: one called "complementary science" (see Hasok Chang's 2004 book Inventing Temperature) that is appealing to so-called heterodox economists; and another one (let's call it, "historical data for the research engine") that I advocate in which historians of
 economic thought contribute to economics as an ongoing enquiry not by reconstructing the past, but by offering an analysis of past (economic) data in order to improve contemporary theory. So, while I am a trained philosopher, I do not wish to deny that history of economic thought can belong in economics. The entire symposium in a pre-print version can be found at  http://www.dpo.uab.edu/~angner/future.html.

Finally, I am grateful to Anthony for his free advertisement for the volume on Adam Smith that I co-edited with Leon Montes. Nevertheless, I can assure Anthony that even though my co-editor advocates a contextualist approach to HET, Leon also wishes to make a contribution to the practice economics. In the last chapter of his 2004 book, Adam Smith in Context: A Critical Reassessment of Some Central Components of His Thought (NY: Palgrave Macmillan), Montes advocates a critical realist perspective to economics.

Sincerely,
Eric Schliesser