================= HES POSTING ================= Roy's provocative editorial speaks of his dream of the time when 'economists' [implicitly the mathematical and quantitative power structure in the discipline] will purchase and read histories of economics in the same way that physicists and mathematicians purchase and read histories of physics and mathematics. He then mentions two books in the history of economic thought, one a biography and the other Ingrao and Israel's _The Invisible Hand_. This latter book is an interesting choice, because the book is explicitly a _critical_ history, one that takes a stand [a negative one] on a significant research tradition in economics. One wonders if this is really the sort of thing that physicists and mathematicians look for when they purchase and read histories in physics and mathematics -- say _critical_ histories of quantum mechanics or topology which take an evaluative negative stand on the achievements of these research programs in physics and mathematics. I wonder if physicists or mathematicians would really take seriously or be interested in such things -- just as you do not find Darwinian biologists [naturalists, paleontologists, population biologists, etc.] who take very seriously or find much interest in books by professionally trained historians or even biologists which preport to give critical histories of Darwinian biology which arrive as a negative evaluative assessment of the Darwinian research program -- in fact, much of the outstanding history of biology produced by top-flight Darwinian biologists was provoked in part by, and takes much glee in exposing the mistakes, confusions, and inadequacies in histories preporting to have competently arrived at such negative assessments. But I take it, from Roy's recommendation of the Ingrao and Israel book, that he does think that this is a book that is both of interest and worth taking seriously. On the fly leaf of my copy of the Ingrao and Israel book, toward the end of the last paragraph explaining the contents of the book, it read, "Ingrao and Israel find that the theory has arrived at a dead end, which raises serious doubts about the internal consistency of the basic model." Point me to a book in the history of physics or mathematics [not the philosophy of physics or the philosophy of mathematics] which is purchased and read by physicists or mathematicians which does, as part of its work, this sort of criticism and evaluation -- I myself can't think of any, off hand. The closest that comes to mind is the sort of journalistic reportage of the contemporary 'theory of everything' -- but these works, even by top-ranked physicists are reports of research taking place elsewhere, whereas, in Ingrao and Israel, you have the original research and analysis taking place right before your eyes (in parallel to research articles published alone). Greg Ransom Dept. of Philosophy UC-Riverside [log in to unmask] http://members.gnn.com/logosapien/ransom.htm ============ FOOTER TO HES POSTING ============ For information, send the message "info HES" to [log in to unmask]