===================== HES POSTING ==================== 
 
 
Explaining the outcomes of revolutionary battles involves an assessment of 
the relative strengths and weaknesses of the forces mustered.  This need 
not - nor should it - involve 'taking sides' in the manner described and 
(rightly criticised) by Bradley Bateman. 
 
But neither should historians assume that an author is taking sides because 
he finds a disparity of intellectual forces (or forces inappropriately 
alligned - like the guns in Singapore in 1941-2 facing the wrong way). 
Because we are aware of the existence and the emotions of civil war 
veterans from the recent revolutions in economics (econometrics, Walrasian, 
Keynesian, Monetarist, New Classical) this should not lead us to falsely 
assume that those who seek to explain the process of revolutionary victory 
or defeat are either Whiggish or embittered. 
 
Revolutions create their own mythology; often these mythologies becomes 
(via textbooks and authoritative repetition) deeply embedded in our 
collective wisdom.  Too many scholars feel threatened by attempts to 
analyse our collective mythology; and prefer instead to label such work as 
'partisan'.  Hence it took me 5 or 6 attempts to explain on this list a few 
weeks ago that I was not praising George Stigler but recognising the 
superior intellectual equipment that he weilded in the Chicago 
counter-revolution (superior in his understanding of the sociology of 
professional economic knowledge construction and destruction, relative to 
his opponents). 
 
All the qualities that we admire in historical scholarship can be used to 
explain the outcomes of intellectual revolutions and the mythologies that 
they create.  This is a much neglected area of research. For it to 
flourish, it requires that readers do not assume that an author is 'waving 
the bloody flag' for one side or another; neither subscribing to Whiggish 
or to 'what could have been' interpretations of history. 
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------- 
Robert Leeson 
Bradley Fellow and Visiting Associate Professor 
Economics Department 
Social Science Centre 
The University of Western Ontario 
London, Ontario, Canada, N6A 5C2 
 
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