Ross, Just read your posting on the difference between history of economic thought and history of economics, and I agree wholeheartedly. I teach an undergraduate course entitled the History of Economic Thought and while, on the whole I approach it as a history of economic thought course I also introduce, as an on-going theme, the kind of methodological concerns (philosophy of science) that are associated with the history of economics discipline. Additionally, when thinking about, or writing about, contemporary economic issues the theoretical structures I rely upon, or attempt to modify, are informed by my understanding of the history of economic theory. However, and now adopting the position of a historian of economics, I do not believe that this is the way the community of scholars called economists view all of this. As you mentioned, theory is viewed by this community as something that can be thought of as being distinct from the history of theory. The closest to a history of theory approach that I perceive many non-history-of-thought-economists pursuing is a literature search of relatively recent expressions of contemporary theoretical issues. And even here it is a rather narrow search of the appropriate literature. The assumption seems to be that contemporary theoretical expressions represent the distilled truth of past efforts - even though these past efforts (such as The Wealth of Nations, Principles of Political Economy and Taxation, Capital, Elements of Pure Economics, The General Theory, and so on) are seldom read. I don't have the citation readily available, but if memory serves me right, I believe that Arjo Klamer reproduced, in one of his "Conversations with ...", the claim by one well known contemporary theoretician that he had not read the past master. I am bringing this up not because I am suggesting that theory creation requires that the theoretician be familiar with past work, but simply because this is a good example of the attitude that I see among most of my non-history-of-thought colleagues. I would also suggest that this attitude is, in part, responsible for the sterile formalism that the discipline of economics is prone to. However, I also suspect that the sterile formalism that I perceive much of economics having gone through in the post-WW II era was a result of relatively unique historical circumstances - in particular, the unprecedented wealth of capitalism's golden age. Oh well, I have to get back to work. Mayo C. Toruno Department of Economics California State University, San Bernardino San Bernardino, CA 92407 909-880-5517 e-mail: [log in to unmask]