================= HES POSTING ================= In this discussion several people have referred to McCloskey's work, but as far as I know, no one has referred to what might, for this debate, be the most significant chapter in The Rhetoric of Economics: the one on Fogel, which discusses the creation of a new conversation - quantitative economic history (or whatever you want to call it). McCloskey's point was that the creation of a new conversation required standards drawn from both history AND economics. Surely the lesson from this is that in HET we do not necessarily want to mimic either historians or economists, but we have to create our own standards, drawing on both history and economics. Thus I agree with Roy that we should learn from historians about standards by which to judge historical work. It does not follow, however, that we should necessarily be writing the same type of histories as other people or that the histories we will write will necessarily satisfy those working in other fields. -------------------------------------------------------------------- Roger E. Backhouse [log in to unmask] Department of Economics University of Birmingham Edgbaston Phone: 0121 414 6655/+44 121 414 6655 Birmingham B15 2TT UK Fax: 0121 414 7377/+44 121 414 7377 -------------------------------------------------------------------- ============ FOOTER TO HES POSTING ============ For information, send the message "info HES" to [log in to unmask]