HISTORY OF ECONOMIC THOUGHT IS IT "HISTORY" OR "ECONOMICS"? University of Manitoba Economics Departmental Conference Delta Marsh Field Station 29-30 September 1995 The Manitoba department's annual conference this year focused on the history of economic thought. The background for the theme was the department's potential reevaluation of its resource commitment to history of economics in the face of declining budgets and program cuts (Manitoba is a relatively eclectic department with three members publishing in the history of economic thought--Forget, Chernomas, and Waterman--and several others who have enough training to teach the field at the undergraduate level; history of thought is currently required). How important is the history of economic thought for training economics students (at both undergraduate and graduate levels) relative to other program requirements? Invited guests were Warren Samuels and Ross Emmett (a Manitoba graduate). Departmental contributions were provided by Norm Cameron and Evelyn Forget. The four papers were distributed ahead of time, enabling greater discussion time at the sessions. Roughly 2/3's of the department attended, along with 6 graduate students. Total attendance was about 30 persons. Five 1 and 1/2 hour plenary sessions were held over 24 hours, beginning on Friday evening and ending late Saturday afternoon. The setting was the University's biological field station on the bank of the south end of Lake Manitoba. With beautiful fall weather, the southern migration of geese over the lake, and wonderful fall colours, the setting couldn't have been better (for the prairies!). Warren Samuels began the conference with an open discussion based on his paper "The Work of Historians of Economic Thought." Rather than seeking to defend the relative merits of study in the history of economic thought, Warren used the strategy of articulating the wide range of activities that historians of economic thought engage in. As historians of *economic thought*, we tell stories of the discipline's intellectual development-- often intended to either provide a justification for current theoretical concerns or recover past diversity lost in the concerns of contemporary hegemony, and rationally reconstruct older ideas and theories which can provide contemporary insights or form the basis for new work. As historians of *economics*, we study the practices of the discipline (the exclusion/inclusion of individuals, structure of schools, educational training, etc.), the origin and adoption of theories, and the relation of ideas to their contexts (e.g., personal biography, historical time period, and the "various networks and filiations that have existed and continue to exist"). As *historians*, we take care to recover and preserve archival materials; we also realize that we construct history, and bring to that construction our own interests and theoretical concerns. Throughout his paper, and the discussion of it, Warren stressed the breadth of perspective and method gained by the participation of historians of economic thought in the economics discipline. The discussion of Warren's paper set out fairly clearly the central issues of the weekend. Sympathetic to the history of economic thought both as a set of professional activities and as an essential part of an economist's training, department members focused on the merits of its inclusion in the required core of the department's curriculum relative to other required training (in econometrics, for example). Good economists all, they asked what the opportunity cost of devoting significant departmental resources to the history of economic thought was, given the reality of shrinking budgets and possibly fewer faculty positions. One question that appeared during the opening discussion, and then again later, was the relative merits of focusing attention on the history of economic thought in a separate course versus including some attention to it in a variety of courses (from reading Heilbroner, Fusfeld, etc. in first year, to assigning classic texts in some of the sub- fields). No consensus emerged on that question over the weekend. Another theme raised that evening that recurred several times over the weekend was the curricular role of a history of economic thought course in providing students with the "ah-ha" experience of seeing a unified vision of what economics was all about. Saturday morning there were two sessions. At the first, Evelyn Forget outlined the merits of studying the history of economic thought in her presentation: "Why should a professional economist study the history of economic thought?" Beginning with the premise that economists often see no merit in studying the "absurd opinions and doctrines which have been denounced" (quotation from Say), Evelyn articulated a number of benefits to be gained by the study of the history of economic thought. As theorists, the study of the history of economic thought helps us in several ways: it helps us to see economic theory as a living and evolving entity; it provides students with another opportunity to practice economic analysis; it teaches intellectual humility; it makes us aware that economic theories are constructed at particular points in time and place, and often for particular purposes; and it helps us to recover lost ideas that are often vital at times of dispute in the contemporary discipline. As professional economists, the study of the history of economic thought provides several other things: it is one of the places where students of economics learn to communicate with non-economists; it makes one aware of the different types of evidence or data relevant to a problem; and it teaches us that economics is part of a larger conversation. Evelyn concluded with the suggestion that the study of the history of economic thought also makes us better people: "What could be better than producing students who can read and write, who have respect and regard for the accomplishments of other people and other intellectual traditions, who have a healthy skepticism about the 'truth value' of what we profess but, simultaneously, recognize that we do have valuable insights to share? What is better than producing students who look toward the accomplishments of an ever evolving future with a solid grounding in the insights of the past?" The other morning session focused on Norman Cameron's paper: "The history of economic thought: progress or cycle [a suggested alternative was "progress or Poisson distribution"]?" Norm provided a "Colanderesque" account of macroeconomic thought in postwar North America, based on the notion that the evolution of macroeconomic ideas are explicable in terms of the operation of the demand and supply of ideas within the institutional framework of a discipline's leading graduate schools. In such a market, "the only visible product of a new approach for several decades may be its own replication. The invisible hand . . . may produce outcomes more commonly the result of invisible parasites." Norm's paper provided the occasion for two related discussions. The first focused on a theme that had recurred throughout the earlier discussions; namely, that if the criteria of truth-seeking were efficient contemporary scientific theory would encapsulate all that was right in past theory (the point is usually made by asking "does chemistry or physics need its history?"). Norm's paper suggested that the criteria of success in the institutional framework of the academic market are not the criteria of truth- seeking (reputation and self-promotion are the central interests, not truth), and hence, that there is no guarantee that present theory will encapsulate anything from the past. The second discussion raised here regarded postmodernism. Norm resisted the ascription; Warren and Ross argued that his paper opened the door for the postmodern turn by making scientific practice the object of study, by pointing out the multiplicity of criteria at work in scientific practice, and by providing a non-equilibrating account of the scientific practice of economists. After lunch and time for a walk on the lakeshore, the participants settled in for Ross Emmett's presentation: "Reflections on 'Breaking Away': Economics as Science and the History of Economics as History of Science." Responding to Margaret Schabas' 1992 *HOPE* article on the relation of the history of economics to the history of science, Ross provided a framework for distinguishing between the history of economic thought and the history of economics (an argument HES subscribers might remember from a discussion in the spring) and then considered some of the distinction's implications for historians of economics. Focusing on the discursive elements of scientific practice, Ross argued that the history of economic thought is an integral part of economic theory because it engages the theory's tradition of discussion from the standpoint of contemporary theoretical conversation (in an earlier discussion, Ross suggested that a history of economic thought course is the students' theory course; what most "theory" courses do is apply math to that theory); the history of economics, on the other hand, is a part of the discipline of intellectual history, in that it attempts to provide a historical identity for economic ideas and practices (If you have read this far, you will realize that Ross and Warren made similar distinctions in their papers). After pointing out the difference between his argument for the integral relation between the history of economic thought and economic science and the argument that the history of economic thought is integral to economics because economics is a social science (implying that natural sciences don't need their history of scientific thought), Ross went on to question whether the history of science provided the only other context for historians of economics. Here he pointed to intellectual history, social and cultural history, the sociology of knowledge, and even economics as providing (possibly alternative) explanatory frameworks for the explanation of the ideas and practices of economics. The conference closed with a general discussion about the themes that had emerged during the sessions. Much of that discussion focused on whether the history of economic thought provided the only course in which students gained that vision of what economics was about that an economics program should presumably provide. Ross B. Emmett, Augustana University College, Camrose, Alberta CANADA T4V 2R3 voice: (403) 679-1517 fax: (403) 679-1129 e-mail: [log in to unmask] or [log in to unmask]