Dear Prabhu, Thank you for that excellent discussion of reductionism, I agree totally about the usefulness of reductionism, especially if we are willing to recognize the distance between the reductionist theory and the reality it represents, a distance that is always present. That is, it is useful to the degree that one does not take it too seriously, to the degree that it is not dogmatized. As soon as one dogmatizes the theory, it ceases to have utility, since every reductionism necessarily involves a distortion of the concrete reality. In the case of marriage, for example, one can (and must) discuss it under the terms of a contract for certain purposes, but this is useful so long as one does not mean to exhaust the relationship in contractual terms. Using a reductionist approach, Ricardo can come up with the highly useful and enlightening theory of Comparative Advantage. And there can be no doubt that the theory is "true," theoretically. But CA cannot be dogmatized so as to divorce it from its social context. And indeed, Ricardo did not dogmatize it, but surrounded it with a number of implicit and explicit assumptions, assumptions which can be critically examined and practically applied. Further, (and here I am indebted to the analysis of Prof. Asso), the entire classical and neoclassical tradition is not unambiguous on this question, even among free trade's most ardent supporters. The best in the profession did not divorce CA from its concrete instances and social context. Yet now the theory is dogmatized so that any question about the actual context of a trade, any question about trade with slave economies of trade at a chronic deficit for example, are met with stony silence as questions beyond the pale, as questions heterodox. Which brings us to the question of the importance of history. You state, >Critical defenders of the profession (among whom I certainly number >myself - and perhaps you do too?) will always draw attention to the >distance between aspiration (intersection with reality) and the current >or historical state of the profession (those instances where it fails to >intersect with reality). > >This raises the question of the criteria we use to evaluate the history >of economics. Are we to evaluate our history from the viewpoint of the >current orthodoxies of our profession? Or from a wider, human, >viewpoint? This, I think, gets to the central issues. In most textbooks, the economic theories are presented as pure received truth; orthodoxy becomes mere dogma. I think the study of history is the antidote to this dogmatizing tendency, and that he who does not know the history of an idea, does not really know the idea. Without history, the present moment (and its received dogmas) tends to displace every other moment and every other point of view. I would contend that no human idea can be understood apart from the history that created it. It is not that there exist no real truths, valid for all times and places, but that even when dealing with these truths, they are always expressed in human language, a cultural artifact. A human expression of the truth is always proximate, not absolute, at least in any non-trivial case. When the University of Chicago in 1972 dropped history as a required study for graduate economics students, they essentially dropped the serious study of economics and replaced it with a training program for practitioners of the received doctrines, a practice conducted without a full understanding. I think it is the major task of economic historians (and of HES) to restore economics to its proper place as an humane science, one that cannot be divorced from the history and scientists who formed the science. John C. Medaille