Ontology and the history of economic thought: an introduction

Abstract

Why indeed? The vast majority of economists seem to regard the history of economic ideas as irrelevant at best or a nuisance at worst. The subject has long vanished from economics programmes in most English-speaking countries, even in the form of elective courses, and the same is true in many other places as well. It seems no exaggeration to say that most economics departments would quietly endorse Arthur Pigou’s view of the history of economics, as cited by Mark Blaug amongst others, as antiquarian researches on the wrong opinions of dead men (e.g., Blaug, 1997, p. 1, 2001, p. 154). There have been numerous discussions of this situation over the years (e.g., Blaug, 2001). Rather than enter these debates, we shall rely instead on the words of perhaps the greatest historian of economics, someone who was also a first-rate theorist:...