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An afterthought. 
 
Roy: do you really have any evidence about the frequency with which 
physicists read the history of their subject, and the kind of history 
they read when (if) they do, compared to the same for economists? My 
purely personal and anecdotal impression of working physicists is that 
they are pretty Whiggish - truth triumphed over error, etc. An 
experimental subject has the advantage that experiments make good 
stories - how our ancestors vanquished error with one test-tube and a 
bit of string. In economics we have the problem of people using the 
pretence of intellectual history to harangue neo-classicists about the 
error of their ways, which doesn't happen in physics (as has been 
more politely pointed out). 
 
---------------------- 
Tony Brewer ([log in to unmask]) 
University of Bristol, Department of Economics 
8 Woodland Road, Bristol BS8 1TN, England 
Phone (+44/0)117 928 8428 
Fax (+44/0)117 928 8577 
 
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