The End of History (of Ideas)? And Why Philosophy & Economics is not History of Economics
cyrilhedoin.substack.com
As an economist who has been trained with some sensibility to historical aspects of the discipline (my PhD supervisor was a historian of economics, though my PhD thesis was not history of economic thought properly speaking), I’m totally used to the folk view entertained by most of my colleagues that studying the history of economics is useless. This widespread attitude has a very concrete manifestation: it is now exceptional to find a non-optional history of economics class in standard economic curricula. The argument about the dispensability of history for teaching the discipline also has its version on the research side. The history of economic thought is an increasingly marginalized field. A meaningful sign of this marginalization is that the members of this fairly closed community essentially refer to themselves as “historians” rather than “economists”. While they may have interactions with scholars in related historical fields or some philosophers of science, they have few if any with economists.
The End of History (of Ideas)? And Why Philosophy & Economics is not History of Economics
The End of History (of Ideas)? And Why…
The End of History (of Ideas)? And Why Philosophy & Economics is not History of Economics
As an economist who has been trained with some sensibility to historical aspects of the discipline (my PhD supervisor was a historian of economics, though my PhD thesis was not history of economic thought properly speaking), I’m totally used to the folk view entertained by most of my colleagues that studying the history of economics is useless. This widespread attitude has a very concrete manifestation: it is now exceptional to find a non-optional history of economics class in standard economic curricula. The argument about the dispensability of history for teaching the discipline also has its version on the research side. The history of economic thought is an increasingly marginalized field. A meaningful sign of this marginalization is that the members of this fairly closed community essentially refer to themselves as “historians” rather than “economists”. While they may have interactions with scholars in related historical fields or some philosophers of science, they have few if any with economists.