Ross, 
        Just read your posting on the difference between history of economic 
thought and history of economics, and I agree wholeheartedly.   I teach an 
undergraduate course entitled the History of Economic Thought and while, on 
the whole I approach it as a history of economic thought course I also 
introduce, as an on-going theme, the kind of methodological concerns 
(philosophy of science) that are associated with the history of economics 
discipline.  Additionally, when thinking about, or writing about, 
contemporary economic issues the theoretical structures I rely upon, or 
attempt to modify, are informed by my understanding of the history of 
economic theory.  
        However, and now adopting the position of a historian of economics, 
I do not believe that this is the way the community of scholars called 
economists view all of this.  As you mentioned, theory is viewed by this 
community as something that can be thought of as being distinct from the 
history of theory.  The closest to a history of theory approach that I 
perceive many non-history-of-thought-economists pursuing is a literature 
search of relatively recent expressions of contemporary theoretical issues. 
And even here it is a rather narrow search of the appropriate literature. 
The assumption seems to be that contemporary theoretical expressions 
represent the distilled truth of past efforts - even though these past 
efforts (such as The Wealth of Nations, Principles of Political Economy and 
Taxation, Capital, Elements of Pure Economics, The General Theory, and so 
on) are seldom read.  I don't have the citation readily available, but if 
memory serves me right, I believe that Arjo Klamer reproduced, in one of 
his "Conversations with ...", the claim by one well known contemporary 
theoretician that he had not read the past master.  I am bringing this up 
not because I am suggesting that theory creation requires that the 
theoretician be familiar with past work, but simply because this is a good 
example of the attitude that I see among most of my non-history-of-thought 
colleagues.  
        I would also suggest that this attitude is, in part, responsible for 
the sterile formalism that the discipline of economics is prone to. 
However, I also suspect that the sterile formalism that I perceive much of 
economics having gone through in the post-WW II era was a result of 
relatively unique historical circumstances - in particular, the 
unprecedented wealth of capitalism's golden age.   
        Oh well, I have to get back to work. 
 
Mayo C. Toruno 
Department of Economics 
California State University, San Bernardino 
San Bernardino, CA 92407 
909-880-5517 
e-mail: [log in to unmask]