Perceptions of our Discipline: Three Magisterial Treatments of the Evolution of Economic Thought

Abstract

I have taken as the subject of this presidential address a consideration of the dynamics (that is, what shapes the future direction) of the professional discipline of economics. From a conceptual standpoint, I feel most comfortable with our dating the latter part of the nineteenth century, surely during the 1870s, as the time when what had been a general, and perhaps even gentlemanly, subject became a professional discipline. For purposes of our discussion I shall use an abridged definition of "professional discipline," namely, "a shared perception of a body of knowledge, including sets of questions, data and analytical methods, common to those who are identified as and/or identify themselves as members of that profession." Thus, what we are basically considering at this time is how that body of knowledge identified as economics was and continues to be reshaped. Analyzing that reshaping process is, according to my view, what the subdiscipline of the history of economics is all about. Our point of departure is to examine ad seriatim three quite different treatments of the history of economic thought in order to suggest alternative perceptions of the causes for change in the delimitors of our professional knowledge. We then turn to assessing the three treatments. The paper concludes by suggesting an alternative to methodology [cf. Perlman, 1978] or to "rhetoric" [cf. McCloskey, 1983] as the basis for the functional delimitors of the agreed-upon body of our professional knowledge.