================= HES POSTING ================= Tony Brewer writes: > The same goes for the history of economics. Internal history is a > perfectly sensible pursuit. So is analysis of the socio/political > context. I stress again that I have nothing against studies that > emphasize the social context. Sometimes we want to link the history of > economics to the history of (say) philosophy, sometimes to the history > of mathematics, or physics. Sometimes we focus on a very narrow range > of questions, sometimes we zoom out to a wider view. He goes on to write, and it is this which I want to focus upon: > My objection is to an attempt to privilege certain approaches over > others. Weintraub's claim was that because economics is an human > activity we must study the social background. We appear to be getting closer to the heart of the matter. Tony has me right, in his last sentence, but I am nowhere to be found in his first. Saying "we must study" says just that, where "we" are historians of economics. I believe that not everyone should do this, not no one should do this, but some of us must do this. Thus "we" should, which was, I though, Jim Henderson's point which began this thread. De-privileging internalist, and/or Whiggish, histories is not the same thing as privileging social history, or psycho-history, or any other histriographic stance. It is simply opening our discipline to more varied, and I believe (it is of course an ethical not epistemological stance) more interesting and therefore more compelling narratives. In Geertz's terms, it makes for a thicker history; in McCloskey's terms, it makes for a a richer conversation. E. Roy Weintraub, Professor of Economics Director, Center for Social and Historical Studies of Science Duke University, Box 90097 Durham, North Carolina 27708-0097 Phone and voicemail: (919) 660-1838 Fax: (919) 684-8974 E-mail: [log in to unmask] URL: http://www.econ.duke.edu/~erw/erw.homepage.html ============ FOOTER TO HES POSTING ============ For information, send the message "info HES" to [log in to unmask]