Adam and John raise the same issue, it seems to me. They are concerned 
with my use of words. They think that my statement that "sociology, 
anthropology, and rhetoric have nothing directly to do with the history 
of certain ideas" is either a contradiction of the term "history" or 
blasphemous. Not so, I would argue.

It is possible that the argument for them turns on a dogmatic definition 
of history. In other words, they may use a definition of history that 
necessarily excludes the possibility that ideas are independent of 
culture. If so, then the proper question to ask is: what does it mean to 
say that "ideas are independent of culture." No reasonable person, 
including me, would say that ideas can exist without people or that the 
concept of people I use when I speak of ideas is independent of culture. 
I certain accept the proposition that everyone on this list is 
associated with a culture and would not be who they are in the absence 
of a culture. Similarly everyone who has ideas is associated with a 
culture. My argument is that the ideas I am describing TRANSCEND 
culture. What I mean by this is that, so long as people have certain 
experiences, these ideas would be important to them. The critical 
"causal" variable is not culture but the experiences that people have. 
The idea of culture and the idea of experience are not co-defined, in my 
usage of these terms. They are distinct.

Let me give some examples of experiences that I believe transcend culture.

The child in the crib can cause mom to come if he makes a particular 
sound. The standing child will fall down if he does not hold on to 
something to prop him up. The man who heats a pot of water over a fire 
can cause the water to boil. Finally, the government leader who commands 
an irrigation system for his mountain island (I am thinking of Bali) can 
increase the productivity of agriculture. These causal ideas are not 
absolute. They are each conditional on the presence of other 
circumstances that I have not specified. But they are invariant with 
respect to a particular culture.

Now let me focus on the last of these ideas: an irrigation system. I 
maintain that it is reasonable, meaningful, and perhaps helpful to the 
current generation to glean a history of the ideas and thoughts from 
writings at different times and in different places about using 
irrigation to raise the productivity of agriculture.

I also maintain that it is reasonable, meaningful, and helpful to the 
current generation to write a history of economic ideas and thoughts of 
the type that are listed in my post, as shown below. We are able to form 
this history because we are human actors whose minds possess a logical 
structure and not necessarily because we are associated with a 
particular culture.

This is not to deny that members of some cultures would not be prepared 
to comprehend these ideas. A child who had never observed an adult walk 
may never try to stand. And a person who had never seen fire us unlikely 
to form the idea that it can cause water to boil. These people are 
capable of forming the ideas because their minds, too, have a logical 
structure; but they are just unlikely to do so.



On 12/8/2010 10:21 PM, Pat Gunning wrote:
> Roy likes to think in extremes. He also apparently does not like 
> people who classify themselves as historians of economic thought.
>
> But I would venture to say that none of the people in this class would 
> deny that "ideas are human creations and performance of complex social 
> acts." Moreover, it seems to me perfectly reasonable, no matter what 
> calls oneself,  to deny that sociology, anthropology, and rhetoric 
> have anything directly to do with the history of certain ideas. 
> Ricardo's law of comparative advantage, for example, is an economic 
> thought that can be studied without reference to sociology, etc. One 
> might want to study the social, etc. context in which this thought was 
> produced. But one might also want to study how this thought was handed 
> down and modified or improved upon by subsequent individuals who met 
> the challenge of attempting to expand on it. The same is true of the 
> invisible hand theorem, the marginal productivity theory of 
> distribution, the theorem of consumer sovereignty, the theory of 
> private property rights, the quantity theory of money, and the 
> Austrian trade cycle theory. I am sure there are others.
>
> I sometimes wonder whether the relativists among us might use 
> relativism as an excuse for avoiding the hard choices about which 
> ideas are significant and which are not. In my view, it makes a 
> difference to the future of a society whether people do or do not 
> understand
>
> (1) that the division of labor can make labor more productive.
> (2) that, under free markets, individuals tend to receive rewards 
> commensurate with their contribution to the well being of those in the 
> consumer role.
> (3) that private property rights mitigate what would otherwise be 
> external effects.
> (4) that, other things equal, an increase in the money supply causes 
> higher prices.
> (5) that, other things equal, an unplanned for increase in the money 
> supply by means of loan markets cause malinvestment and a trade cycle.
>
> A citizen who fails to learn these lessons is hardly qualified to 
> participate in the election of government agents who are expected to 
> help set the rules circumscribing human interaction.
>
> These "ideas" or "thoughts" are every bit as important as the ideas 
> and thoughts that make up the history of physics and chemistry. 
> Indeed, a good argument can be made that if it had not been for 
> advances in the enlightened ideas of the predecessors of the modern 
> economists, physics and chemistry would not have advanced very far, as 
> everyone knows they have. I personally pity those historians of any 
> ilk attempting who trivialize these "economic thoughts" and I would 
> challenge anyone to defend the proposition that any one of them is not 
> important for the citizens of a democracy to know.
>
> Yet Roy seems to think that the history of these ideas or thoughts 
> MUST consist of fairy tales. There are certainly misguided and 
> mistaken histories of ideas. But Roy's claim is much stronger.
>
>
> On 12/8/2010 2:45 PM, E. Roy Weintraub wrote:
>> The distinction between HE and HET or HOPE is the following: HET 
>> creates the impression that thought or ideas live autonomously and 
>> exist in a world of disembodied shadows where ideas themselves beget 
>> ideas unmediated by human agency or human community. Those of us who 
>> are repulsed by this fairly tale, who see ideas as human creations 
>> and performances of complex social acts, use HE or the older HOPE. If 
>> the sociology, anthropology, and rhetoric of economics is intrinsic 
>> to understanding the development of economics, and its continued 
>> presence in human discourse, then HET is too weak a term, and implied 
>> practice, to engage broadly interesting work.
>>
>> And yes, history of mathematics is sometimes taught in mathematics 
>> departments. If one looks at the institutional affiliations of 
>> scholars in the History of Science Society database, linked to the 
>> HSS website, and perform a search using USA AND Mathematics, you can 
>> see that those with a history of mathematics specialization are 
>> distributed across math departments, history departments, science 
>> studies programs, history of science programs, etc.
>>
>> On Wed, Dec 8, 2010 at 12:41 PM, Womack, John 
>> <[log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>> wrote:
>>
>>     Can someone much more steeped than I am in the field of "the
>>     history of economics" explain the difference, if any, between this
>>     field and the history of economic thought?
>>     A related point, or opinion: So long as the economists who now
>>     dominate the profession in the realms of Judeo-Christian
>>     civilization continue to dominate it, they will think they are
>>     doing "science," their sense of which makes history irrelevant,
>>     simply a fuss over past error, a diversion from the quest for the
>>     ultimate function. Does any Physics or Math department offer
>>     courses in the history of Physics, or Math?
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> -- 
>> E. Roy Weintraub
>> Professor of Economics
>> Fellow, Center for the History of Political Economy
>> Duke University
>> www.econ.duke.edu/~erw/erw.homepage.html 
>> <http://www.econ.duke.edu/%7Eerw/erw.homepage.html>
>>
>>
>

-- 
Pat Gunning
Professor of Economics
Melbourne, Florida
http://www.nomadpress.com/gunning/welcome.htm