To answer Gunning, let me try again, briefly, without pretending to be an economist or trying anyone's patience too far:
I think it's probably impossible to decide in the kind of economics that pretends to divine scientificity, because there are countless excuses in mundane, political economics for why some idea seems to have gone wrong, so that one can argue endlessly and quite truthfully that all other things were not equal--and if only they had been, the idea would have worked, proved itself true, eternally true. 
But historians who study the mundane economy and ideas about it, study them as much as possible in original sources, are (I think) trying to analyze the complexity of circumstances, directions, and forces at work in the development whence came the ideas, themselves none of them ever pure, always a bundle of problems, and are trying as well, therefore, to understand the inevitable confusions and misconceptions of the proponents of the idea who once upon a time were trying to realize it, or use it to explain why things were going so well then, or so badly, in one way or another. And sometimes many agree, though this is certainly no proof, that the idea as its proponents (and maybe its opponents too) understood it worked pretty well, or wretchedly. But then others will argue whether the proponents "really" understood the idea, or emphasized (sufficiently) the "correct" side of the idea, and maybe they will conclude that the idea only seemed to work, that actually (by the ruse of reason) it was another, unrecognized idea that in practice resolved the problem, or caused it. 
It's not that historians don't have models for analysis in mind. They do, or should. But when they try to understand why Helmholtz or Faraday thought as he did, or Menger, or Marx, I cannot myself (in my ignorance) see that they should assume that some physics or economics now has abolished all errors in understanding the physical world, or mundane economy, or ever will. I (like many others) think that for most interesting and useful results they should try to understand how things or ideas got from one time, place, and problem, to another, later. I don't think it makes any sense to try to understand whether a piece of somebody's mind in the past was ever, in itself, regardless of the rest of guy's mind, perfection--or opened a method for perfection, or route to it. 



-----Original Message-----
From: Pat Gunning [mailto:[log in to unmask]] 
Sent: Saturday, February 26, 2011 9:25 PM
To: Womack, John
Subject: Re: [SHOE] FW: [SHOE] application for an assistant professor position-Milan (Italy)

My question is serious, John. Your answer is not.

On 2/26/2011 3:30 PM, Womack, John wrote:
> It's doing history, not giving tests. Try reading some of the new histories of science--and historical sociology of the social sciences.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Pat Gunning [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
> Sent: Saturday, February 26, 2011 11:35 AM
> To: Societies for the History of Economics
> Cc: Womack, John
> Subject: Re: [SHOE] FW: [SHOE] application for an assistant professor position-Milan (Italy)
>
> Fascinating idea, John. But how would you decide whether an economist
> gets matters in his "discipline so stupidly, disastrously wrong?" I can
> see making this judgment for chemistry, biology, physics, etc. But
> economics? What would you suggest?
>
> On 2/25/2011 11:28 AM, Womack, John wrote:
>> I think the best revenge may be to join or create a department or program of the history of sciences, to work alongside historians of chemistry, biology, physics, etc., who now try to understand historically why very smart "scientists" in the past so often got matters in their disciplines so stupidly, disastrously wrong.
>>
>>

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