================= HES POSTING ================= I'm afraid I'm not completely convinced by Roy's remarks that we can so easily seperate out contributions to contemporary economics and contributions to the history of economics. As I argued in my recent HES paper, much of the advance of current Darwinian biology takes place in the context of historical discussions. There can hardly be a more significant contribution to Darwinian biology over that last 30 years than Michael Ghiselin's _The Economy of Nature and the Evolution of Sex_, but this book is in many ways an historical study. Similarly, in the debates at the "High Table" in evolutionary biology, historical narratives that contribute simultaneously to the history of biology and contemporary biology are often at the cutting edge of both the history of biology and the advance of biology. The work of Ernst Mayr, David Hull, Nils Eldridge, and Michael Ruse comes immediately to mind. Within the area of economics I am most familiar with -- one of the most intellectually energized and progressive within all of economics -- Austrian economics, in which the mixing of historical study and contemporary contributions to economics is quite typical, as it is in the energized world of Darwinian biology. As just three recent examples I might mention Frank Machovec's _Perfect Competition and the Transformation of Economics_, Karen Vaughn's _Austrian Economics in America_, and Esteban Thomsen's _Prices & Knowledge_. So within perhaps the most intellectually energized area of contemporary theoretical economics Roy's remarks don't apply very convincingly, nor so in the core of biological science. I would have to think more about what this means for Roy's wider remarks about the value of establishing the history of economics within departments of history or history of science programs. Greg Ransom Dept. of Philosophy UC-Riverside [log in to unmask] http://members.gnn.com/logosapien/ransom.htm My HES paper can be read at: http://members.gnn.com/logosapien/hayekmyth.htm ============ FOOTER TO HES POSTING ============ For information, send the message "info HES" to [log in to unmask]