Anthony Waterman wrote: 
> I appreciate the trouble that Dierdre McCloskey, Eric Schliesser and 
> Pat Gunning have taken to respond to my long-winded comments on HET. I 
> agree with much of what each has said, and could probably reach even 
> greater agreement if we were to meet and talk.  But I still feel that 
> I have failed to make clear just why what I call HEA is a significant 
> component of the intellectual enterprise we label 'economics', and why 
> what I call IH (which is what most of the participants in this 
> discussion are most interested in) is not. I wonder if it would help 
> to use an analogy?  If so, what follows might serve as a vindication 
> both of HEA and of its greatest practitioner, Paul Samuelson.

Anthony gives a witty illustration with a distinction between historical 
pieces of information that are relevant for crafting a winning strategy 
for the impending battle of North Africa and those that are not.  He 
concludes:

> What I am interested in is tactics, and if by making rational 
> reconstructions of byegone battles I can learn things that will make 
> me a better tactician, that's what I'm going to do.

I think what some of Samuelson's critics are saying is that he hasn't 
done a good enough "rational reconstruction" of bygone battles.  Take, 
for example, the battle over the role of saving (rather than 
consumption) in economic growth during the classical period.  Smith, 
Say, Ricardo, (Malthus) and J.S. Mill all emphasized that saving 
promotes economic growth whiles consumption (or current enjoyment by 
income earners) retards it.  J.M  Keynes comes along in 1930 
(_Treatise_) with his paradox of thrift (saving) argument, further 
elaborated in his1936 _General Theory_ in contradiction to classical 
theory.  Wasn't it bad rational reconstruction for Samuelson to have 
crafted the Keynesian argument in terms of algebra and geometry for 
millions of students to learn the false claim that there is such a thing 
as a paradox of thrift in their macroeconomics textbooks (I learned that 
from Samuelson's _Economics_ in the late 1960s), only perhaps to 
struggle to learn the contra-argument in courses in development economics?

I could cite some other examples in macroeconomics where Samuelson could 
have done a better job at rational reconstruction of bygone battles.   
I'm thus left wondering about the usefulness of the history of economic 
analysis (HEA), of which Samuelson is the greatest practitioner, 
according to Anthony, as against that of intellectual history (IH), in 
promoting scientific economics in contrast to scientism.     

James Ahiakpor