================== HES POSTING ====================== 
 
Over the past couple of days, the EH.RES list has had a brief discussion  
thread in response to the following query: 
 
++++++ 
 
Some years ago I read that both Schumpeter and Keynes believed that 
having detailed knowledge about economic history was essential for any 
economic theorist. Does anyone know where I can find Schumpeter and Keynes 
making this statement.  
 
Many thanks in advance.  
 
Peter  
 
J. Peter Murmann 
Assistant Professor of Organization Behavior 
J.L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management 
Northwestern University 
 
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I thought members of this list would appreciate seeing a couple of the  
responses to this query. Here are the best responses. Further responses to  
HES are welcome! -- RBE 
 
++++++++ 
 
>From John Munro (Toronto) 
 
Joseph A. Schumpter, A History of Economic Analysis (ed. from manuscript by 
Elizabeth Boody Schumpeter), New York: Oxford University Press, 1959, pp. 
12-14. 
 
"Of these fundamental fields [history, statistics, theory], economic 
history -- which issues into and includes present day facts -- is by far 
the most important. I wish to state right now that, if starting my work in 
economics afresh, I were told that I could study only one of the three but 
could have my choice, it would be economic history that I should choose. 
And this on three grounds. First, the subject matter of economics is 
essentially a unique process in historic time. Nobody can hope to 
understand the economic phenomena of any, including the present, epoch who 
has not an adequate command of historical facts and an adequate amout of 
historical sense or of what may be described as historical experience. 
Second, the historical report cannot be purely economic but must inevitably 
reflect also 'institutional' facts that are not purely economic: therefore 
it affords the best method for understanding how economic and non-economic 
facts are related to one another.  Third, it is, I believe, the fact that 
most of the fundamental errors currently committed in economic analysis are 
due to a lack of historical experience more often than to any other 
shortcoming of the economist's equipment...... 
 
[I have found that this statement cuts no ice with any of my colleagues in 
Economics, or virtually none] 
 
++++++ 
 
> From: Deirdre McCloskey 
 
Dear Professor Murman, 
 
I wonder what your rhetorical project is.  If it is to persuade the Kellogg 
School to take something other than game theory seriously, I am afraid it 
is doomed.  But having fought the same fight (e.g.  "Does the Past Have 
Useful Economics?" Journal of Economic Literature June 1976 [I think]) I 
sympathize.  But people who will not hire business historians because the 
past is about dead people are not, I warn you, going to be impressed by 
quotations from great economists past, who are themselves dead people.  
 
The locus classicus for Schumpeter's opinions about the tripod of History, 
Theory, Statistics (which characterizes his scientific work itself) is the 
(posthumous) History of Economic Analysis, Oxford UP 1954. Chp. 2, section 
1, pp. 12-13: 
 
"Of these three fields [history, statistics, and theory], economic 
history--which issues into and includes present-day facts--is by far the 
most important" (p. 12) 
 
"most of the fundamental errors currently committed in economic analysis 
are due to lack of historical experience more often than to any other 
shortcoming of the economist's equipment" (p. 13) 
 
"economic history being part of economics, the historian's techniques are 
passengers in the big bus that we call economic analysis. . . . [L]et us 
remember: Latin palaeography . . . is one of the techniques of economic 
analysis" [p. 13] 
 
Keynes was always willing to use the claim "history shows that" (= "I 
propose to assert without evidence that") but his real enthusiasm was not 
for economic history but for the history of economic thought--that is, not 
old economies but old economists.  Thus his Essays in Biography, the essays 
on Malthus, marshall, Jevons, Newton, and Mary Paley Marshall, and his 
famous remark in the last paragraph of The General Theory, "Concluding 
Notes":  
 
    The ideas of economists and polical philosophers, both when they 
    are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is 
    commonly understood.  Indeed, the world is ruled by little else. 
    Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any 
    intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct  
    economist.  Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are  
    distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few  
    years back. 
 
That last sentence is one every economist ought to have by heart. 
 
 
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