I think you are right, Anthony. It is possible to trace scientism back to an earlier era. However, it was not a major factor during those early years. In the US, scientism in economics got a huge boost from the great depression and the widespread post-war belief that the government could solve the unemployment problem. The fledgling econometrics society and the primitive data gathering on business cycles both mushroomed, as their proponents formed an alliance of convenience with the Keynesian revolutionaries, who claimed to have the most important answers to the most popular economic question of the era. Scientism may not have been born at this time but it surely reached puberty during this era. Samuelson was one of the important American intellectual leaders of this "merger." Writers interested in HOT who didn't have mathematical or econometrics skills and who did not learn them at their graduate schools became more and more isolated as this scientistic wave crowded the major and minor journals from the 1050s onward. Moreover, these HOT writers were joined by others whose skills had not prepared them for the new scientist publishing competition or who found the game unappealing. This helps explain the current, partly "heterodox" character of HOT. Regarding your second post, I think I agree with the first part of it. I should perhaps clarify, however. My use of the term "contextual" was not related to intellectual history but to the notion that the historian of economic thought looks for historical antecedants of current economic ideas. For example, one asks: do the new growth theorists adequately appreciate the contributions of Carl Menger, Allyn Young, and Frank Knight to the theory of economic growth? Do the new equilibrium business cycle theorists adequately appreciate Hayek's coordination problem? Fred, I believe, used the term "contextual" in the same way, although it is possible that Greg was using the term differently and that I confused matters by using a more specific definition. I find your comments about Samuelson's history of thought highly contentious. No one could dispute that he referred to particular dead economists. However, a good historian of thought can do two things. She can trace the same idea through a number of writers and she can recognize and account for contrary ideas as they are seen from the perspective of those who promote them. Simply put, she can think outside the box. I don't see Samuelson as someone who traced ideas very deeply or as someone who thought outside the box. I see Samuelson's technical economics like I see the work of a great chess master. To me, it is questionable whether he contributed to the solution of real economic problems. I admit, however, that I do not know all of Samuelson's works and you may be able to persuade me otherwise. I am aware of one sad fact about Samuelson. He apparently knew early on that the "good" econometric results of what became known as neoclassical growth theory using the Cobb-Douglas production function were an artifact. Yet he did not advertise this idea and a generation of lesser minds ended up wasting their time and a generation of textbook writers promoted a false belief he could have easily corrected. Fisher, Franklin M. (2005) ?Aggregate Production Functions - a Pervasive, but Unpersuasive, Fairytale.? Eastern Economic Journal. 3 (3): 489-491. The same is partly true of a decade of fiscal policy advocates. Samuelson admits that he went overboard on fiscal policy. One wonders: To what degree did success in the textbook market corrupt his unbiased scientism. Samuelson, Paul A. (1999) ?Samuelson?s Economics at Fifty: Remarks on the Occasion of the Anniversary of Publication.? Journal of Economic Education. 30 (4): 352-355. Pat Gunning