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[Editor's Note: The following response to Roy Weintraub's editorial was
sent to me privately on October 8 by S. Ambirajan (using the email account
of a friend). Because the response seemed appropriate to the list, I asked
Professor Ambirajan for permission to post the response on HES. With the
sender's blessing, here it is. RBE]
I am in the United States on a brief visit and have only just now
discovered the wonders of Internet although I have been a subscriber to the
HOPE since its first number, and have been a member of the HES since its
inception. That makes me a card carrying member of the History of Economic
Thought fraternity.
Professor Weintraub makes many illuminating points and certainly
no one would quibble with his advice that historians of economics should
maintain high standards of scholarship. But why make it special? That advice
should apply to all areas of scholarship. In my humble opinion, our
sub-discipline has indeed produced some outstanding works of scholarship
along with not so good, just as other sub-disciplines have their share of
good, bad and indifferent.
Whom should the historians of economic thought emulate? The
natural scientist, diplomatic historian, or a constitutional lawyer.....?
It would appear that the method and nature of discourse will depend upon the
specific subject chosen by the individual historian for investigation. We
need to remember that history is not merely an account of how "one damn
thing followed by another". The past throws many queries some of which
stimulates the scholarly curiosity while others go to help understand some
of the pressing concerns of the present. The historian of economic thought
who sets about to reconcile Wealth of Nations with Theory of Moral
Sentiments or to find out what Rosa Luxemborg did to Marx's economics
or to extract fragments of game theory in Talmudic texts will be using
very different materials and methodology compared to another historian of
economic thought probing into the political use of economic ideas by vested
interests to support free trade, protection , bimetallism etc. in late 19th
century or examining the manner in which economic ideas entered government
policies during inter-war Britain. If the individual scholar is
sufficiently serious about his work, he will no doubt acquire the necessary
tools that may be needed to pursue the subject of research.
In the ultimate analysis, does it seriously matter where the
individual scholar is located as long as he is able to write books and
papers that every other historian of economic thought wishes he wrote them
or others find it interesting. Off hand the following works come to my
mind: R.D.C.Black's Economic Thought and the Irish Question, Frank Fetter's
British Monetary Orthodoxy,, Mark Blaug's Ricardian Economics, George
Stigler's paper on the development of Utility theory or Nathan Rosenberg's
institutional aspects of Wealth of Nations. While it does not matter where
the individual historian of economic thought is employed so long as he is
able to pursue his intellectual labours, there can be no doubt that the
practising economist (teacher, researcher or adviser) needs to know the
history of his discipline far more than the natural scientist needs the
history of natural sciences. Of course for the pure economic theorist
interested in nothing but catching the phantoms that dart in his
blackboard, neither history of economic thought, nor economic history, nor
political science, nor philosophy, nor indeed anything that has to do with
man and his life (temporal or intellectual) is needed. But even in the
MIT economics department, such theorists may not be in the majority. It
may be a well worn cliche, but worth repeating. Old economics never dies and
gets buried for ever. because as Keynes reminded us sixty years ago that it
is exhumed from time to time in ways we cannot anticipate. From the point of
social good, the historian of economic thought is better located in
economics departments than elsewhere.
S.Ambirajan
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