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Date: | Fri Mar 31 17:19:18 2006 |
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================= HES POSTING =======================
On Thu, 26 Sep 1996, E. Roy Weintraub wrote:
> When one
> thus says "economics in the late 20th century is more rigorous than it
> was in 1900", just what exactly is one asserting if the concept of
> rigor is not either stable, or comparable between the periods?
>
> That is why I insist that the idea of a "formalist revolution" is
> an historical question, not a quibble over current word usage.
While I have no problem granting that the concept of 'rigor' has varied
considerably over the disciplines and over the years, what if the
hypothetical economist you just quoted answers you by saying:
"When I say that economics today is more rigorous now than it was in 1900,
I mean to be appealing to this field's current usage of 'rigor'. The fact
that 'rigor' has meant different things in different times and places is a
red herring, unless you can show that our neglect of this fact somehow
hampers what the field is currently trying to do."
Is part of your goal to get economists to become better economists by
attending to their history, or is it simply to get historians of
economics to become better historians? Your manifesto suggests your
aspirations are limited to the latter, but your latest missive suggests
you may be on to something more ambitious, like Mirowski.
Yours in discourse
Steve Fuller
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