As I point out in my JHET article on this topic, THE history of astrophysics is live physics and is taught in some astronomy departments:
http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=1855968
As i have argued in recent work, within economics Womack's Kuhnian rhetoric about the relationship between a 'science' and its history has it's origins in George Stigler's writings and teachings: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1628102
(Stigler got it from Parsons and Merton, among others:
<http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1584611>).
These moves are not innocent.
Sent from my iPad
Eric Schliesser
BOF Research Professor, Philosophy and Moral Sciences, Ghent University, Blandijnberg 2, Ghent, B-9000, Belgium. Phone: (31)-(0)6-15005958
http://itisonlyatheory.blogspot.com/
http://www.newappsblog.com/
http://coffeespotamsterdam.blogspot.com/
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/cf_dev/AbsByAuth.cfm?per_id=649484
http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/perl/user_eprints?userid=3158
http://philpapers.org/autosense.pl?searchStr=Eric%20Schliesser
On Dec 8, 2010, at 18:41, "Womack, John" <[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?
|