I am very grateful for Steve Medema's comments because it will help me
clarify what I was saying. And indeed, he himself states that "the
history of economics has plenty to say about the present economic
situation." There is almost no limit to how true I think that
statement is. That is why I replied as I did to the suggestion that a
discussion which invoked the history of ideas to deal with contemporary
economic matters is not only part of the history of economic thought but
is in fact part of the study of economics itself.

It may well be that my close involvement with the attempt to reclassify
HET out of existence here in Australia has made me more than normally
sensitive to these issues, but our articles in the symposium in History
of Economic Ideas (XVI/2008/3) was conducted under the general heading,
"A Canary in the Coalmine". What has happened here in Australia can
happen anywhere. That is why I believe that we as historians of
economics need to understand the role of HET within economics if this
sub-discipline of ours is to survive. Just how little appreciation there
was, at first, for the role of HET within economics was quite
astonishing. For it to have reached the point it had when we historians
of economics finally became involved required almost the entire official
world of the social sciences community to have already signed off on the
reclassification.

The existential issue for us was whether HET is economics or whether it
is instead the history and philosophy of science. Yes, it is both, but
in which of the two does it make its way in the world? In my view, it is
the first of these two and it is only for that reason that HET is an
essential component of economics itself.

In my view it is not an overstatement to suggest that specialists in
HET would be expected think about modern economic problems. We are
economists and economists do think about economic problems, and we use
our specialist knowledge to reach conclusions that would often be
different from the conclusion reached by someone starting from a
mainstream economics position. Not all students of HET think about
contemporary economic problems, of course, but then again, not even all
economists do so either.

The approach to the history of economic thought that Steve has the
least sympathy with is "using that history toward a particular end,"
that is, either using HET to support the mainstream or to attack it.
Well, perhaps I would put it this way, that this is using HET to help
economists understand economic issues and to guide economic theory
towards a better explanation of how economies work with the final aim of
improving economic policy.

If this is not a significant part of what HET tries to do, then the
Australian Bureau of Statistics was right, and HET should be
reclassified as part of the history and philosophy of science and HET
specialists should move out of economic departments where most of us are
now found. But I don't believe that nor does Steve. You do not become
a better physicist by reading Newton, Rutherford and Einstein, but you
do become a better economist by reading Adam Smith, Marx and Hayek.

In this, I do not suggest what the motivations behind the work of
individual scholars ought to be. What I was writing about is the role of
HET itself apart and separate from the individuals who till its fields.
In the HEI symposium, there were many ideas worth considering, but
amongst them was something written by Sam Bostaph (I hope he forgives me
for dragging him into this). This was summarised in our symposium
rejoinder:

"[Bostaph] rightly states, "anyone who is conducting a research
program in economic theory cannot avoid the necessity of drawing upon
past intellectual history." Research into the history of economics, he
notes, is a form of specialisation and division of labour. If economists
are to have access to the history of doctrines, methods, analysis,
definitions and controversies-- that are necessary inputs into their
own work in theoretical and applied economics, there has to have been a
prior effort amongst historians of economics to make this work
accessible."

This is a form of the invisible hand. We each please ourselves with our
own work for whatever reasons, but even so each of us may well be
promoting ends that were no part of our original intention.

For myself, I find HET endlessly fascinating. On my office shelf I have
only a single book from my days as an undergraduate these more than
forty years ago, and that single book is Mark Blaug's incomparable
Economic Theory in Retrospect. It is a work of such astonishing
scholarship that even then I knew it set a standard I could never hope
to reach.

I took to HET not because it can be used to repair bad economic theory,
but because I loved the history and evolution of ideas. My stumbling
across Say's Law came decades later. Steve however asks whether we
should use the past to show contemporary economists they are wrong. He
writes that this is "perfectly legitimate as a form of scholarship,
but I question whether it is scholarship in the history of economic
thought."

Well, my view is pretty clear on this. Using the past is, in my view,
not only a very important part of contemporary economic debates, but is
also part of what historians of economics do, and an important part. HET
journals should not, of course, be used to discuss economic policy
issues; that is not what they are for. But discussions amongst
historians of economics are where economists clarify amongst themselves
those ideas which have descended to us from the past. Perhaps, as Steve
suggests, the history of economic thought is not the place for such
discussion. But if not here, where? and if not us, who?

Steven Kates