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Roy's provocative editorial speaks of his dream of the time when 
'economists' [implicitly the mathematical and quantitative power structure 
in the discipline] will purchase and read histories of economics in the 
same way that physicists and mathematicians purchase and read histories of 
physics and mathematics.  He then mentions two books in the history of 
economic thought, one a biography and the other Ingrao and Israel's _The 
Invisible Hand_.  This latter book is an interesting choice, because the 
book is explicitly a _critical_ history, one that takes a stand [a negative 
one] on a significant research tradition in economics.  One wonders if this 
is really the sort of thing that physicists and mathematicians look for 
when they purchase and read histories in physics and mathematics -- say 
_critical_ histories of quantum mechanics or topology which take an 
evaluative negative stand on the achievements of these research programs in 
physics and mathematics.  I wonder if physicists or mathematicians would 
really take seriously or be interested in such things -- just as you do not 
find Darwinian biologists [naturalists, paleontologists, population 
biologists, etc.] who take very seriously or find much interest in books by 
professionally trained historians or even biologists which preport to give 
critical histories of Darwinian biology which arrive as a negative 
evaluative assessment of the Darwinian research program -- in fact, much of 
the outstanding history of biology produced by top-flight Darwinian 
biologists was provoked in part by, and takes much glee in exposing the 
mistakes, confusions, and inadequacies in histories preporting to have 
competently arrived at such negative assessments.  But I take it, from 
Roy's recommendation of the Ingrao and Israel book, that he does think that 
this is a book that is both of interest and worth taking seriously.  On the 
fly leaf of my copy of the Ingrao and Israel book, toward the end of the 
last paragraph explaining the contents of the book, it read, "Ingrao 
and Israel find that the theory has arrived at a dead end, which raises 
serious doubts about the internal consistency of the basic model." Point me 
to a book in the history of physics or mathematics [not the philosophy of 
physics or the philosophy of mathematics] which is purchased and read by 
physicists or mathematicians which does, as part of its work, this sort of 
criticism and evaluation -- I myself can't think of any, off hand.  The 
closest that comes to mind is the sort of journalistic reportage of the 
contemporary 'theory of everything' -- but these works, even by top-ranked 
physicists are reports of research taking place elsewhere, whereas, in 
Ingrao and Israel, you have the original research and analysis taking place 
right before your eyes (in parallel to research articles published alone). 
 
Greg Ransom 
Dept. of Philosophy 
UC-Riverside 
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