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2020 | OriginalPaper | Chapter

1. General Introduction: Why Should We Study the History of Economic Theory?

Author : Roberto Marchionatti

Published in: Economic Theory in the Twentieth Century, An Intellectual History - Volume I

Publisher: Springer International Publishing

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Abstract

The General Introduction criticizes the mainstream conception of the history of economic thought as rational reconstruction and offers a different perspective of the role of the history of economic thought in economics. Mainstream approach treats the thinkers of the past as if they are contemporaries with whom it is possible to exchange views. It represents the point of view of those who regard earlier economic doctrine as simply ‘the wrong opinions of dead men’. On the contrary, author’s approach assigns an important role to the historical reconstruction of the theoretical contributions of different economists and combines historical with intellectual reconstruction in order to recover the thinking of the authors of the past in its entirety and to grasp their intellectual activity as a whole.

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next chapter Introduction
Footnotes
1
The term neoclassical was coined by Thorstein Veblen (1899–1900): it was a negative description of Marshall’s economics. Then the term came into general use. Hicks (1932) and Stigler (1941) extended the meaning of neoclassical to encompass all marginalist writers.
 
2
We should add the Blaug of the first edition of Economic Theory in Retrospect published in 1962. Blaug was a pupil of Stigler and adopted his approach in the book that was the most successful history of economics textbook for many decades after its publication. In the 1990s, however, Blaug broke with that approach. On Blaug’s historiographic thinking, see Davis (2013).
 
3
Blaug (2001, p. 148) wrote that “Some commentators in history of economic thought express belief in the notion that the community of economists represents an approximately perfect market in which new ideas are so efficiently transmitted in a communication network of journals, books, seminars and conferences that there is virtually no loss of significant content. This view of an efficient marketplace of ideas implies that history of economic thought can be safely neglected by modern economists, because what is valuable in the ideas is fully contained in the present curriculum”.
 
4
On Samuelson as a historian of economic theory, see Medema and Waterman (2010) and Weintraub (2016).
 
5
Donald Gordon’s paper presented at the 1965 session of the annual conference of the American Economic Association, which was specifically organized to discuss the contribution of the history of economic thought to the understanding of economic theory, played an important part in this marginalization of HET. Gordon’s conclusion was, of course, that the history of economic thought has little or nothing to contribute to comprehending contemporary economics.
 
6
On Schumpeter as a historian of economic theory, see Moss (1996), Estrada (2014), and Bögenhold (2017).
 
7
Schumpeter warns economists against prolonged visits to the lumber room, but, fortunately, he himself does not heed his warning.
 
8
See the forceful criticism by Viner (1954).
 
9
On the relationship between the history of economic thought and intellectual history, see Samuels (1974), Viner (1991), and Winch (2016).
 
10
As Stefan Collini (2016, p. 16) wrote, “Intellectual history tends to be slyly corrosive of fixed disciplinary identities and boundaries”.
 
11
The idea of the economic profession as a complex system has also been suggested by Colander et al. (2004a, b).
 
12
Also the concept of “network of conversation”, introduced by Klamer (2007), can be a useful tool in the analysis of these phenomena.
 
Literature
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———. 1988. Out of the Closet: A Program for the Whig History of Science. History of Economics Society Bulletin 9 (1): 51–60.
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Metadata
Title
General Introduction: Why Should We Study the History of Economic Theory?
Author
Roberto Marchionatti
Copyright Year
2020
Book
Economic Theory in the Twentieth Century, An Intellectual History - Volume I

Print ISBN: 978-3-030-40296-9

Electronic ISBN: 978-3-030-40297-6

Copyright Year: 2020

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-40297-6_1