The History of Economic Thought as Intellectual History

Abstract

Economic thought is a branch of intellectual history. While there is no alchemy involved in seeing the history of economics as intellectual history and although the two aspects obviously run together and are not always readily or conclusively disentangled, there are aspects of the subject which derive from it being the history of economics and aspects which derive from it being the history of ideas; aspects, that is, which reflect the nature (or differential perceptions) of the economy and aspects which reflect the impact of and assume the character of ideational systems. The general objective of this article is to suggest opportunities for creative research that flow from contemplating the history of economic thought as intellectual history. It is primarily concerned with the form rather than the content of the history of economic thought, with characteristics which inform and channel economic enquiry but represent modes of thought rather than economic analysis per se. More specifically, the article attempts to set forth some of the diverse facets that confront the historian of economic thought who considers the subject a branch of intellectual history. A second and correlative objective is to suggest a strategy of inquiry that promises to enrich both the work of the historian of economic thought and the discipline of economics.

The person who would study the history of ideas must have a kind of curiosity about the human mind and its workings that is not common. He must be willing to treat ideas that seem silly or superstitious and that are perhaps obsolete with the same care as he would give to established truths. For the history of ideas tells us among other things how we got to think the way we do — and if that is not of importance, one wonders what is.

George Boas

The history of science, by its nature as part of the history of ideas, has got to be a discipline which helps actual scientists to get a deeper insight into the real nature of their own science.

Margaret Mastennan

Among other considerations, this article will abstract from such important and relevant topics as these: the sociology of knowledge; the functionalism-teleology controversy; the mathematization of economics; the problem of the scope of economics; the theory-empiricism controversy; the absolutism-relativism controversy; the role, nature, and structure of scientific revolutions; the relevance and usefulness of general linguistics, psycholinguistics, and general semantics; conceptions of social meaning; the transmission, diffusion, and reception of ideas, the process of redefmition and reinterpretation of received ideas; biography; filtration systems; and the social-psychological dynamics of theoretical innovation.

The article was originally published in the History of Political Economy, vol. 6 (1974), Fall, pp. 305–23.