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I suspect that one reason for the silence regarding Professor 
Mirowski's editorial is that it says things that practically 
everyone who is familiar with the other non-hard sciences would 
agree with. The historicism, institutionalism, and scientism that 
tempted individuals seeking status as professional economists 
also tempted individuals in all of those social science 
enterprises where newly hired university teachers sought 
legitimacy by establishing a profession. And this more or less 
covers the field of the social and human sciences. 
 
In the non-social sciences like biology and ecology, mathematical 
modeling and simulation played important roles, while there was 
obviously little use for historicism and institutionalism. In the 
social sciences, as in economics, these developments naturally 
met opposition from would-be praxeologists. 
 
So if one wants to discuss the history of a profession, he may 
benefit from noting such similarities. But this enterprise 
strikes me a bit like trying to understand the performance of a 
football team by studying the interaction of the players while 
they are off the field. One would find similarities between the 
behavior of the players and the behavior of truck-drivers, 
stockbrokers, members of the sewing circle, and historians of 
economic thought. Such a study might be interesting per se, but 
we would be stretching matters to call it the study of football. 
 
So one can agree with Mirowski and wait until next month. Or one 
can try to shift the grounds of the discussion -- an enterpise 
that does not seem to interest most HESers. 
 
-- 
--  
Pat Gunning 
http://stsvr.showtower.com.tw/~gunning/welcome 
 
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