================= HES POSTING ================= 
 
I'm afraid I'm not completely convinced by Roy's remarks that we 
can so easily seperate out contributions to contemporary economics 
and contributions to the history of economics.  As I argued in 
my recent HES paper, much of the advance of current Darwinian biology 
takes place in the context of historical discussions.  There can 
hardly be a more significant contribution to Darwinian biology over 
that last 30 years than Michael Ghiselin's _The Economy of Nature and 
the Evolution of Sex_, but this book is in many ways an historical 
study.  Similarly, in the debates at the "High Table" in evolutionary 
biology, historical narratives that contribute simultaneously to 
the history of biology and contemporary biology are often at the cutting 
edge of both the history of biology and the advance of biology.  The 
work of Ernst Mayr, David Hull, Nils Eldridge, and Michael Ruse comes 
immediately to mind.  Within the area of economics I am most familiar with 
-- one of the most intellectually energized and progressive within all 
of economics -- Austrian economics, in which the mixing of historical study 
and contemporary contributions to economics is quite typical, as it is 
in the energized world of Darwinian biology.  As just three recent examples 
I might mention Frank Machovec's _Perfect Competition and the Transformation 
of Economics_, Karen Vaughn's _Austrian Economics in America_, and 
Esteban Thomsen's _Prices & Knowledge_.  So within perhaps the most 
intellectually energized area of contemporary theoretical economics Roy's 
remarks don't apply very convincingly, nor so in the core of biological 
science.  I would have to think more about what this means for Roy's wider 
remarks about the value of establishing the history of economics within 
departments of history or history of science programs. 
 
 
Greg Ransom 
Dept. of Philosophy 
UC-Riverside 
[log in to unmask] 
http://members.gnn.com/logosapien/ransom.htm 
 
My HES paper can be read at: 
 
http://members.gnn.com/logosapien/hayekmyth.htm 
 
============ FOOTER TO HES POSTING ============ 
For information, send the message "info HES" to [log in to unmask]