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Various HES editorials from last fall have spawned a long series of 
E-mail comments on different kinds of histories, the legitimate scope 
of historical inquiry, and the proper place of the history and the 
historians of economics. The ongoing debate has been most instructive, 
even beyond revealing some of the beliefs and prejudices of the 
participants. Besides, the territorial fencing and the emphasis on 
classifications with subtle overtones of mine-is-better-than-yours has 
been most amusing. 
 
Still, it seems to me that the whole debate has really skirted the 
most fundamental question at hand. Economics teaches us that behavior 
depends on objectives. Hence, the questions that we ask must determine 
our methods and our approach to the issues. This is just as true of 
the History of Economics as it is of Economics itself. Accordingly, 
the fundamental question is: What do we hope to gain by studying the 
history of economics in the first place? 
 
Schumpeter (1954) answered that we hope to become better economists. 
In the best of all possible worlds a history of economics would be of 
little use, since whatever is useful from the work of preceding 
generations would have been incorporated into the current state of the 
art. But, given our own limits as well as the complexity of real 
phenomena, the theory that we can manage is imperfect. Hence, we 
benefit from the study of our intellectual history on several levels. 
According to Schumpeter we gain: 
 
(1) Pedagogical advantages: We cannot fully comprehend the current 
state of economics if we do not understand how modern theories "embody 
the achievements and carry the scars of work that has been done in the 
past under entirely different conditions." (1954, p. 4) 
 
(2) New ideas: In Schumpeter's words, a "man's mind must be indeed 
sluggish if, standing back from the work of his time and beholding the 
wide mountain ranges of past thought, he does not experience a 
widening of his own horizon." (1954, p. 5) 
 
(3) Insight into the ways of the human mind: Studying the theories and 
arguments of the past teaches us something about logic and the nature 
of our own thought processes.  A historical perspective teaches us 
that "scientific habits or rules of procedure are not merely to be 
judged by logical standards that exists independently of them; they 
contribute something to, and react back upon, these logical standards 
themselves." (1954, p. 5)  
 
But, Schumpeter also believed in additional benefits that are less 
easily summarized. As Schumpeter put it, our "performance is, and 
always was, not only modest but also disorganized." (1954, p. 6)  As a 
result, we can not trust each other to summarize the current state of 
the art, let alone the state of the past. Hence, those of us who 
truthfully study our intellectual history are rewarded with "useful if 
disconcerting lessons"(1954, p. 6) as well as a sense of subtlety and 
ambiguity otherwise unrealizable. That is, we obtain not only a sense 
of our own (and each others) innate limitations, but in perceiving 
these limitations we also lessen their hold on us.  
 
Literature surveys of complex issues tend not just to oversimplify, 
more often than not they flat out misrepresent. Consider, for example, 
the monetarist controversies. Modern textbook descriptions of 
monetarism have nothing at all to do with the ideas of most of those 
who actually did label themselves monetarists. I am not aware of a 
single textbook that points out that Brunner and Meltzer (who coined 
the term monetarism) rejected the very IS-LM framework, and that they 
did indeed believe that money demand was unstable. Such 
misrepresentations almost seem to be the rule rather than the 
exception, in the textbooks the actual ideas of writers from Say to 
Lucas tend to be replaced with more easily digestible fantasies. I 
have yet to find a single classical economist whose actual ideas, once 
I read the relevant work, were recognizable from the canonical second 
and third hand depictions. Most history of thought textbooks remind me 
of the children's game in which a specific message is whispered from 
one person to another down a line only to emerge at the end twisted 
beyond all recognition. Paradoxically, I guess the point is, we each 
need to study the history of economic thought on our own, because we 
certainly cannot trust each other to do it for us.  
 
Joan Robinson (unfortunately I do not recall the exact reference) once 
said something to the effect that that in economics you cannot know 
anything about anything without knowing everything about everything, 
so therefore in order to say anything about anything one is forced to 
ignore a great deal. Obviously this also goes for the history of 
economic thought. Alas, we need to know everything, but we live in a 
world of intellectual scarcity. So, we must make choices, and 
hopefully we are rational enough for those choices to be congruent 
with what we hope to achieve. 
 
Even those motivated by nothing but neutral, scholarly, and 
open-minded curiosity can still produce incompetent and misleading 
histories of economic thought. At the same time, history denigrated as 
"Whig" (note that this very label implies a certain advocacy by those 
who use it) or internally-focused and advocacy-based history can be 
most useful. As Schumpeter put it: "To  investigate facts or to 
develop tools for doing so is one thing; to evaluate them from some 
moral or cultural standpoint is, in logic, another thing, and the two 
need not conflict. Similarly, the advocate of some interest may yet do 
honest analytic work, and the motive of proving a point for the 
interest to which he owes allegiance does not in itself prove anything 
for or against this analytic work: more bluntly, advocacy does not 
imply lying."(1949, p. 346) 
 
A work may be clearly based in advocacy for a given point of view and 
yet be outstanding, thoughtful, and in its very mission, illuminating, 
even for those who reject the particular cause endorsed. As an 
example, let me suggest Gaffney (1994), who sets out to rehabilitate 
some Georgian ideas long rejected by the mainstream in economics. I 
believe that most open-minded readers, even those who reject the ideas 
Gaffney seeks to resuscitate, will find this work highly informative 
and thought-provoking in a manner that it would not be without its 
very tone of upholding the cause. 
 
My point is simply that different questions call for different 
approaches. A self-styled apostle of "thick" history of economics once 
told me that he had no interest whatsoever in the ideas of economics, 
rather he was interested in how these ideas came to be. So be it. 
(Even though I do not believe that these questions are really 
separable). But I am still a bit puzzled as to why he would want to 
study the history of economics in the first place, if not in order to 
become a better economist. Of course, if he could convince me that the 
style of women's hats in the late 18th century was fundamental to 
classical theories of rent and that understanding this was key to 
perceiving our own modern biases, then I would be truly grateful. This 
might well make me a better economist. But, emphatically, that is not 
his aim. 
 
Of course, unlike miserable thin thinkers like myself, the "thick" 
thinkers do not take positions on economic theories or theorists of 
the past. Perhaps this is caused by their disinterest in economic 
theories in the first place. And, if this disinterest protects them 
from the ignorance and/or incompetence which yields so many nonsense 
histories of the thin variety, then more power to them. Still, the 
proof of the pudding and all that, where is the groundbreaking "thick" 
stuff that will make me a better economist. 
 
 
REFERENCES: 
 
Gaffney, Mason. 1994. "Neo-Classical Economics as a Stratagem Against 
Henry George." In The Corruption of Economics. Edited by M. Gaffney 
and F. Harrison. London: Shepheard-Walwyn. 
 
Schumpeter, Joseph A. 1949. "Science and Ideology." American Economic 
Review 39: 345-359. 
 
Schumpeter, Joseph A. 1954. History of Economic Analysis. New York: 
Oxford University Press. 
 
________________________________________ 
 
Petur O. Jonsson 
Department of Economics and Finance 
323 School of Business and Economics 
Fayetteville State University 
Fayetteville, NC 28301-4298 
 
Phones: 910-486-1984 (Office) 
 910-425-0424 (Home) 
 
E-Mail: [log in to unmask] 
 
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