Dear Anthony,

I accept the difference between Intellectual History and the History of 
Economic Analysis.  To avoid writing nonsense, the one requires serious 
competence in history and philosophy (including at least until Marshall, 
as you point out, theology!).  To avoid writing nonsense, the other 
requires a serious competence in economic theory.  Right.

But I think you would agree that the two need to interact.  For example, 
an internalist history of the sort that Stigler practiced, and Blaug and 
Samuelson practice, is often bad history, and precisely because of its 
timeless and ahistorical premises results in a particular theory of how 
to do economics.  If you take the internalist view you think of Keynes 
and Menger as spoiled examination scripts.  We have it right today.  An 
example is Bob Lucas' macro course at Chicago, in which he announces on 
the first day that they will be reading no work older than five years.  
The kids at Chicago literally do not know how to pronounce "Keynes" (no 
exaggeration).  Lucas' practice appears to come out of a theory that 
economics is "like physics" (people who say this commonly have no idea 
how physics actually works, by the way, and are not eager to find out). 

You cite Feyerabend.  He would have supported my counterargument here: 
one needs to study the actual history of Galileo's findings and 
astrology and so forth, said Feyerabend, in order to establish that 
there is no such thing as a timeless Scientific Method.  This is 
something that scientists need to know, somehow, so that they are not 
enchained by a limitation of arguments acquired from their high-school 
chemistry teacher.  The best scientists (I think of Feynman and 
Samuelson) acquire it on their own.  Dolts like me have to have it shown 
to them before they can get over the powerful and erroneous claim 
current in the culture that Science is something quite different from 
human argument.  So a physicist or a chemist does need a true history of 
science.

Another example of the same problem is the practice in departments of 
philosophy of treating Plato as a contemporary.  I had a colleague once 
who taught Plato to graduate students from the old Victorian 
translations and didn't know a word of Greek.  He argued that it he 
didn't need to know Greek because it was the philosophical arguments 
that mattered (and therefore he didn't realize for example that the 
differential uses in Attic Greek of verbs of seeing and verbs of hearing 
in indirect discourse affected---indeed, achieved---Plato's proofs).  
People like Rorty and Toulmin and MacIntyre have argued that 
philosophers should be treated historically, and that doing so changes 
how one does philosophy.  In Rorty's case for example a historical study 
arrives at the conclusion that novelists are as important 
philosophically as official philosophers for philosophy. 

In our field the analogy would be the historically-acquired grasp that, 
say, "pre-analytic vision" a la Schumpter and latterly Bob Heilbroner of 
blessed memory is very important in economic analysis. 

Regards,

Deirdre McCloskey