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I come to the debate over Roy Weintraub's editorial rather late, 
because I have been away. Seeing it all at once, on my return, it 
strikes me that the discussion has tended to move away from Roy's piece. 
 
Roy's emphasis was on standards - work in the history of economics 
should be judged by the same standards as work in the history of 
physics. That must be right. Within economics there are fairly well 
understood (if tacit) standards for judging routine types of 
theoretical and empirical work, but not for work that doesn't fit the 
standard categories and not for work on the history of the subject, 
except to the extent that we, historians of economics, have established 
them. They certainly shouldn't be lower than the standards applied in 
any other branch of intellectual history. It is hard to see why they 
should be different. 
 
What worries me about Roy's view is that he seems to imply that other 
(superior) branches of intellectual history have standards that we can 
pick off the shelf and use to upgrade our (inferior) work. Do they? 
There are standards of scholarship and logic that apply everywhere, 
manifested in the best work in all branches of intellectual history. 
There are rather silly fashions, like the ritual addition of the words 
"discourse" or "conversation" (upgrade your methodology at a stroke - 
just tell your word processor to search for "economics" and replace it 
with "conversations about economics"). There is low grade work, by 
people with an axe to grind. This is true everywhere. Other branches of 
intellectual history are just as riven by methodological and 
substantive disagreements as the history of economics is. Remember what 
McClosky said about the folly of looking for rigid methodological rules? 
 
---------------------- 
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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