An obvious point, too often missed: historians are not homogenous as a
discipline. Many of us who would be labeled as historians would define
ourselves as economic historians. This might be considered a different
category in the US from elsewhere in the English-speaking world, let alone
elsewhere. Many economic historians retain research interests in HET and
consider we can do it as credibly as economists who specialise in HET.
'Intellectual history' in UK at least has its practitioners if not the
separate disciplinary identity of economic history, though few in
intellectual history have an interest in the history of the social sciences.
Roger Middleton
--On 07 December 2010 12:14 +1100 Steve Kates <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:
> I would like to take up a theme discussed by John Brown in a thread
> commenced by an early posting from Roy Weintraub. John Brown wrote:
>
> ?History of Economic Thought has its feet in two distinct
> disciplines, intellectual history and economics. You certainly cannot
> write intelligently about the history of thought without a deep
> understanding of the discipline of economics.?
>
> On this I could not agree more. I have just written a paper on this
> very issue, ?Historians and the History of Economic Thought?, which
> is about to be published in the next issue of History of Economics
> Review. The paper looked at the economics embedded within three
> biographies of Keynes that had been written by historians to identify
> whether useful additional insight and analytical technique are brought
> to the study of economics itself when historians undertake studies in
> HET.
>
> In this paper I have come to the conclusion that historians of
> economics, when looking at the actual development of theory, have little
> that can be taken from professional historians. HET is almost entirely a
> specialist area of economics. You cannot write intelligently about the
> history of economic thought without a deep understanding of the
> discipline of economics.
>
> The question raised by Roy Weintraub, if I understand him correctly, is
> quite interesting. Where is the model, the template for studies in HET?
> As he wrote, ?there appears not to be any published discussion about
> the craft of writing the history of economics that one could give to an
> apprentice student?. He therefore asks "are there any ways of leading
> students into our craft practices that are other than personal and
> idiosyncratic"? And I apologise in advance if the words "model" and
> "template" are too solid for what he had in mind.
>
> But in addressing his question, let me suggest that there are two
> different dynamics in HET that need to be kept quite separate. There is,
> firstly, teaching students of economics some of the history of their
> subject. This should be a component in the education of every economist
> for a variety of reasons that I need not get into in this brief note.
> For myself, I doubt there is much ?craft? involved in such student
> essays. We just want our students to know who have been the most
> influential economists of the past and what their contributions have
> been.
>
> But then there is research into the history of economic thought that is
> undertaken by scholars such as ourselves. As far as this part of
> scholarship is concerned, I would argue that history of economics is
> something that a proportion of economists independently find themselves
> drawn to and that it is the questions that they raise themselves that
> constitute the history of economic thought. We are the embedded cohort
> of scholars within the body of economic theory with our not necessarily
> intended contribution being not only to ensure that economic discussions
> amongst economists maintain an historical perspective but also to do
> what we can to make sure that such discussions are as accurate and as
> comprehensive as possible. Few economists are grateful that we take on
> this role and just as few seem to appreciate how important it is to the
> development of economic theory that such scholarship exists. I am not
> all that sure that historians of economics appreciate their own central
> role in the development of economic theory and policy.
>
> How does this scholarly side of the history of economics get done? My
> answer is this. Each of us finds something that interests us and then we
> write about it. This historical knowledge of the theories and theorists
> of the past is then built into the conversations that economists have
> with each other and in this way even as we discuss modern economic
> theory we find that when some aspect of theory is discussed, monetary
> theory, for example, the views of Wicksell or Fisher or others far more
> obscure are woven into the debates.
>
> Is there a template for any of this that can be taught? There may be
> although it wouldn?t bother me if there isn?t. I think I would even
> prefer that there isn?t since there seems no real point in having a
> pro forma structure however loose it might be. But unless we separate
> the teaching of HET to economics students from the body of scholarship
> on HET we may be hunting for a phantom framework that does not exist.
>
>
> Dr Steven Kates
> School of Economics, Finance
> and Marketing
> RMIT University
> Level 12 / 239 Bourke Street
> Melbourne Vic 3000
>
> Phone: (03) 9925 5878
> Mobile: 042 7297 529
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Professor Roger Middleton FRHistS AcSS
Professor of the History of Political Economy & Head, School of Humanities
University of Bristol
11 Woodland Road
Bristol BS8 1TB, United Kingdom
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Tel. +44 (0) 117 928 7931 Fax. +44 (0) 117 331 7933
Email [log in to unmask]
URL http://eis.bristol.ac.uk/~hirm/rmhome.html
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