================= HES POSTING ================= 
 
I think Roy Weintraub and I now agree. "Internal" and "external" 
approaches to the history of economics are both valid and complement 
each other. He wants to avoid privileging internal history. I resist 
privileging external history. 
  Patrick Gunning is surely right to ask what purpose we have in mind. 
I seems to me there isn't just one sort of question we might ask. If we 
ask how economics got to be the way it is and look for a causal 
explanation then both internal and external factors surely matter. 
Which is more important is debatable, but it is a question we may be 
able to answer (in part, at least) by studying the evidence. I think 
there really has been a growth of knowledge (maybe not all would 
agree), but external factors surely affect the kind of questions asked, 
etc. We may also ask how we got to where we are now, looking for an 
answer which increases our understanding of the subject rather than a 
causal story. Here the focus is on internal history. That seems to be 
what Gunning wants. It is a worthy aim, but not I think the only one. 
Or we might be interested in the role played by economic ideas in the 
wider history of ideas, policies, and so on. Here external factors 
predominate. Horses for courses. 
  I think there is still a problem. What exactly is Whig history? There 
seems to be a widespread feeling that it is bad, but do we agree on 
what it is or why it is bad? Is it the view that the history of ideas 
records progress from error to truth? But that view may be true, or 
partly so. Presumably we regard our present views as better than 
alternatives (else we wouldn't hold them), unless we don't hold any 
views of our own at all (pure relativism, which is what Gunning (I 
think) and I rather fear in the Weintraub/Henderson position). 
  I don't think that Whig history has in fact dominated, as Bradley 
Bateman does. One major strand (almost dominant for some of the recent 
period?) is sort-of-Whiggish. That is the view of (ex?)Marxists and 
Sraffians, in which history records a movement from error to truth 
(Marx), then a relapse into error, then a revival of truth (Sraffa). Is 
that Whig? Is it better than neoclassical Whiggishness? 
---------------------- 
Tony Brewer ([log in to unmask]) 
University of Bristol, Department of Economics 
8 Woodland Road, Bristol BS8 1TN, England 
Phone (+44/0)117 928 8428 
Fax (+44/0)117 928 8577 
 
============ FOOTER TO HES POSTING ============ 
For information, send the message "info HES" to [log in to unmask]