================== HES POSTING ====================== Over the past couple of days, the EH.RES list has had a brief discussion thread in response to the following query: ++++++ Some years ago I read that both Schumpeter and Keynes believed that having detailed knowledge about economic history was essential for any economic theorist. Does anyone know where I can find Schumpeter and Keynes making this statement. Many thanks in advance. Peter J. Peter Murmann Assistant Professor of Organization Behavior J.L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management Northwestern University +++++++ I thought members of this list would appreciate seeing a couple of the responses to this query. Here are the best responses. Further responses to HES are welcome! -- RBE ++++++++ >From John Munro (Toronto) Joseph A. Schumpter, A History of Economic Analysis (ed. from manuscript by Elizabeth Boody Schumpeter), New York: Oxford University Press, 1959, pp. 12-14. "Of these fundamental fields [history, statistics, theory], economic history -- which issues into and includes present day facts -- is by far the most important. I wish to state right now that, if starting my work in economics afresh, I were told that I could study only one of the three but could have my choice, it would be economic history that I should choose. And this on three grounds. First, the subject matter of economics is essentially a unique process in historic time. Nobody can hope to understand the economic phenomena of any, including the present, epoch who has not an adequate command of historical facts and an adequate amout of historical sense or of what may be described as historical experience. Second, the historical report cannot be purely economic but must inevitably reflect also 'institutional' facts that are not purely economic: therefore it affords the best method for understanding how economic and non-economic facts are related to one another. Third, it is, I believe, the fact that most of the fundamental errors currently committed in economic analysis are due to a lack of historical experience more often than to any other shortcoming of the economist's equipment...... [I have found that this statement cuts no ice with any of my colleagues in Economics, or virtually none] ++++++ > From: Deirdre McCloskey Dear Professor Murman, I wonder what your rhetorical project is. If it is to persuade the Kellogg School to take something other than game theory seriously, I am afraid it is doomed. But having fought the same fight (e.g. "Does the Past Have Useful Economics?" Journal of Economic Literature June 1976 [I think]) I sympathize. But people who will not hire business historians because the past is about dead people are not, I warn you, going to be impressed by quotations from great economists past, who are themselves dead people. The locus classicus for Schumpeter's opinions about the tripod of History, Theory, Statistics (which characterizes his scientific work itself) is the (posthumous) History of Economic Analysis, Oxford UP 1954. Chp. 2, section 1, pp. 12-13: "Of these three fields [history, statistics, and theory], economic history--which issues into and includes present-day facts--is by far the most important" (p. 12) "most of the fundamental errors currently committed in economic analysis are due to lack of historical experience more often than to any other shortcoming of the economist's equipment" (p. 13) "economic history being part of economics, the historian's techniques are passengers in the big bus that we call economic analysis. . . . [L]et us remember: Latin palaeography . . . is one of the techniques of economic analysis" [p. 13] Keynes was always willing to use the claim "history shows that" (= "I propose to assert without evidence that") but his real enthusiasm was not for economic history but for the history of economic thought--that is, not old economies but old economists. Thus his Essays in Biography, the essays on Malthus, marshall, Jevons, Newton, and Mary Paley Marshall, and his famous remark in the last paragraph of The General Theory, "Concluding Notes": The ideas of economists and polical philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed, the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back. That last sentence is one every economist ought to have by heart. ============ FOOTER TO HES POSTING ============ For information, send the message "info HES" to [log in to unmask]