================= HES POSTING ================= I have not had an opportunity to read Fetter's piece, as Bert Mosselmans recommends, but I suspect that the thrust of the argument is that before one can make a judgment about the study of the history of economics, one ought to have a reasonably clear definition of economics. If this is not what Fetter says, it is what he should say. Roy Weintraub suggests that the history of economics should adhere to the norms of historical scholarship in general. Yet if economics is different from physics, this reasoning is incomplete. He would seem to be putting the cart before the horse. One may reply by saying that discussions of the meaning of economics are themselves part of the history of economic doctrines, or of economic analysis. But such a reply suggests that the historians of economics ought to study people who claim to be, or who are judged to be, economists. The alternative, which seems more reasonable to me, is that historians of economics ought to study thoughts about a particular field of thought or knowledge. But before this can be done, they must identify that field. If it is no different from other fields of thought or knowledge, then they can proceed as the historians of other fields have done. But if it differs, they may have to adopt different methods. There is, of course, no way to avoid making judgments when one sets out to study the history of economics. The question is whether such initial judgments ought to be about (1) the meaning of the field of economics or about (2a) whose claims that they are economists or (2b) whose judgments about which people are economists ought to be accepted. It may appear that (1) and (2) are similar. It is true that if one has made a firm judgment about (1), one is prepared to make judgments about (2). But the reverse is not necessarily true. I may judge that the claims of people I regard as neoclassical economists (Marxian economists, Austrian economists) are more legitimate without ever taking up the issue of how economics ought to be defined. So I argue: let's define economics before we begin to talk about what historians of economics ought to do. Pat Gunning National Chung Hsing University http://stsvr.showtower.com.tw/~gunning/welcome ============ FOOTER TO HES POSTING ============ For information, send the message "info HES" to [log in to unmask]