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Gunning writes, in reply to Henderson: 
> 
> It seems wise to begin my comment on Professor Henderson's editorial by 
> identifying the class of ideas with which I assume the history of economics 
> is concerned. The fundamental idea is that of how normal human beings 
> interact under the conditions of the market economy. 
 
He also writes : 
 
> I have no particular interest in 
> the people unless they are in some way related to what I identify as 
> contributions to the growth of ideas. 
 
He goes on to caution us that: 
 
> however, that [Henderson's] aim comes very close to RELATIVISM. 
> In its most 
> extreme form, relativists aim to convince us that all ideas are relative 
> and that others who claim that ideas are absolute are misinformed and 
> likely to be pompous and elitist. 
 
For me, reading Henderson's piece made me want to vote for him to be 
President of HES -- then I realized I had already done that. His 
recognition that "doing economics" is, and has been, a human activity 
compels recognition that to study the history of economics forces us to 
attend to the context in which that activity takes place, the 
institutions which support it, the local and contingent conditions in 
which the people and their activity occurs, and the activities 
themselves, meaning the processes and products of their doing of 
economics. 
 
The two issues of Whiggism, and intellectual history to the exclusion 
of broader historical work, are separate though. The former concerns 
attending to the past constructed by or conditioned by the needs of the 
present. The latter issue is one of scope. It is unremarkable that 
both themes resonate with historians of economics who themselves are 
trained for the most part as economists. As working producers of 
today's economic-knowledge products, one's eye turns to the past from 
a socialization of concern with today. And training in close readings 
of texts -- articles, data sets, etc. -- conditions one first to ask of 
history "what does the text mean?".  That for economists the two 
issues are often linked results I suspect because  "meanings" are 
found in, or constructed from, the connection of the historical 
document with today's concerns. 
 
Thus I read Henderson as seeking a double broadening of concern by 
historians of economics;  he calls for attending to social history, 
sociology, anthropology, history of science, history of mathematics, 
economic history, etc. and the implications are worth noting. 
Particularly, historians of economics will interest themselves in 
matters that go beyond the "great books". Conversely, or perversely, 
Gunning asks us to restrict our attention to those matters which he 
considers important. Henderson is inclusive, Gunning is exclusive, 
drawing a fence around a small set of questions in intellectual 
history, and telling us to garden only within the fenced area. I 
would suggest that there is much fertile land beyond his quite 
mineral-depleted soil, and many flowers are a-blooming there. 
 
(And finally, quite beside the point of Henderson's posting, can we 
not avoid the culture wars crap about RELATIVISM and its 
THREAT TO ALL WE HOLD TRUE AND WORTHWHILE. 
HES is really not a good venue for such musings ...) 
 
E. Roy Weintraub, Professor of Economics 
Director, Center for Social and Historical Studies of Science 
Duke University, Box 90097 
Durham, North Carolina 27708-0097 
 
Phone and voicemail: (919) 660-1838 
Fax: (919) 684-8974 
E-mail: [log in to unmask] 
URL: http://www.econ.duke.edu/~erw/erw.homepage.html 
 
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