The “Whig Historian” on Adam Smith: Paul Samuelson's Canonical Classical Model

Abstract

Facts, the historian E.H. Carr argued, are like fish in a vast ocean: what one catches to a large extent depends on where one chooses to fish and on the kind of tackle one uses. Professor Paul Samuelson has offered (HES Bulletin, Fall 1987) a prescription for stimulating demand for history of economics. He proposes “that history of economics more purposefully reorient itself toward studying the past from the standpoint of the present state of economic science. To use a pejorative term unpejoratively, I am suggesting Whig Economic History of Economic Analysis.” (Samuelson 1987: 52) Samuelson promises that fishing with the tackle of present-day theory will catch commercially attractive historical fish and illustrates this approach with his own work in history of economics.