===================== HES POSTING ===================== [Editor's Note: The following response to Roy Weintraub's editorial was sent to me privately on October 8 by S. Ambirajan (using the email account of a friend). Because the response seemed appropriate to the list, I asked Professor Ambirajan for permission to post the response on HES. With the sender's blessing, here it is. RBE] I am in the United States on a brief visit and have only just now discovered the wonders of Internet although I have been a subscriber to the HOPE since its first number, and have been a member of the HES since its inception. That makes me a card carrying member of the History of Economic Thought fraternity. Professor Weintraub makes many illuminating points and certainly no one would quibble with his advice that historians of economics should maintain high standards of scholarship. But why make it special? That advice should apply to all areas of scholarship. In my humble opinion, our sub-discipline has indeed produced some outstanding works of scholarship along with not so good, just as other sub-disciplines have their share of good, bad and indifferent. Whom should the historians of economic thought emulate? The natural scientist, diplomatic historian, or a constitutional lawyer.....? It would appear that the method and nature of discourse will depend upon the specific subject chosen by the individual historian for investigation. We need to remember that history is not merely an account of how "one damn thing followed by another". The past throws many queries some of which stimulates the scholarly curiosity while others go to help understand some of the pressing concerns of the present. The historian of economic thought who sets about to reconcile Wealth of Nations with Theory of Moral Sentiments or to find out what Rosa Luxemborg did to Marx's economics or to extract fragments of game theory in Talmudic texts will be using very different materials and methodology compared to another historian of economic thought probing into the political use of economic ideas by vested interests to support free trade, protection , bimetallism etc. in late 19th century or examining the manner in which economic ideas entered government policies during inter-war Britain. If the individual scholar is sufficiently serious about his work, he will no doubt acquire the necessary tools that may be needed to pursue the subject of research. In the ultimate analysis, does it seriously matter where the individual scholar is located as long as he is able to write books and papers that every other historian of economic thought wishes he wrote them or others find it interesting. Off hand the following works come to my mind: R.D.C.Black's Economic Thought and the Irish Question, Frank Fetter's British Monetary Orthodoxy,, Mark Blaug's Ricardian Economics, George Stigler's paper on the development of Utility theory or Nathan Rosenberg's institutional aspects of Wealth of Nations. While it does not matter where the individual historian of economic thought is employed so long as he is able to pursue his intellectual labours, there can be no doubt that the practising economist (teacher, researcher or adviser) needs to know the history of his discipline far more than the natural scientist needs the history of natural sciences. Of course for the pure economic theorist interested in nothing but catching the phantoms that dart in his blackboard, neither history of economic thought, nor economic history, nor political science, nor philosophy, nor indeed anything that has to do with man and his life (temporal or intellectual) is needed. But even in the MIT economics department, such theorists may not be in the majority. It may be a well worn cliche, but worth repeating. Old economics never dies and gets buried for ever. because as Keynes reminded us sixty years ago that it is exhumed from time to time in ways we cannot anticipate. From the point of social good, the historian of economic thought is better located in economics departments than elsewhere. S.Ambirajan ============ FOOTER TO HES POSTING ============ For information, send the message "info HES" to [log in to unmask]