================= HES POSTING ================= Bruce Caldwell's editorial contains, in my opinion, some very interesting points. I feel that ancient economists did do economics when or by doing history of economics: indeed, I think that it could be said, without much loss of accuracy, that doing economics was not very different from doing the history of economics (something of this kind goes also for philosophy: philosophy is the history of philosophy). As I was reading Caldwell's editorial, Marx's case was came to my mind, though many others might also serve as examples. This raises a question: why have economics and its history fallen apart from each other? I do not know whether a SSK neoclassically-oriented model can explain why historians of economics have not adopted a self-referential view; probably because self-referentiality would not only be somewhat dull, but also sterile. After all, what do we study history of economics for? I think that a right answer to this question should stress that we do not study what our forerunners said in order to know just what they said, but in order to know how things are. I am not sceptic, and I think that the economic classics can help us to get a better understanding of economic reality; is this not the reason why we call them "classics"? No doubt you can get many useful insights by studying sociological aspects of an influential community of economists, such as the English Classics or the Austrians, but thinking is an individual task and must be performed by individual brains. I do not know if Caldwell's conjecture about the move from "great economist" to "great economist" can be proved to be true or false; what I do know is that if a thinker has seen something true about economic facts, we can always turn to her or him to learn what she or he saw. To a certain extent, economic theorists are not much better off than us as far as the connection with reality is concerned. I often hear complains about this not only from the laymen, but also from other colleagues who, using Caldwell's expression, "are doing economics" (or that which the profession regards today as economics -this is neither a fact nor a conjecture, but a feeling). However, the complaint that economics is increasingly becoming a branch of applied mathematics is also heard sometimes among the profession - this second complaint being closely related to the previous one. When somebody asks me what economic methodology has to contribute to economic discussion, I usually point to the problem of realism of assumptions (with not completely unsatisfactory results). Have we given a satisfactory answer to this problem?, is it not, after all, a key question in modern macroeconomic theorizing? just think of neo-keynesianism, checking the rational expectations hypothesis (or assumption?), etc. The complaints about the relation between theory and fact show a certain dissatisfaction with the way economics is being built today; maybe we can provide the profession with insights and ideas from those economists who saw true things, that is, the classics. If we say things that have some element of truth, we would not be forced to persuade others that what we are doing is relevant. Maybe we should try not to explain ourselves, but to reflect upon ourselves and take steps to view in a fresh way the natural connection between economics and its history so prominent in the classics. Kepa M Ormazabal Department of Economic Theory University of the Basque Country ============ FOOTER TO HES POSTING ============ For information, send the message "info HES" to [log in to unmask]