Historians of Decline, or Historians in Decline?

This week GMU's Center for the Study of Public Choice is hosting the Summer Institute for the Preservation of the Study of the History of Economics (wow, a mouthful). Regrettably I have not attended many of the sessions, but do plan to wake up for Bruce Caldwell's talk tomorrow morning. In preparation, I just finished Caldwell's work Hayek's Challenge, which has been sitting on the shelf for way too long since a nice young lady purchased it for me last November.

If you are not familiar with Hayek's body of work, or think it consists primarily of The Road to Serfdom and "The Use of Knowledge in Society," the breadth and depth of his writing may shock you (these two works receive little attention). And even if you are familiar with some of it, the historical context and evolution of his thinking is wonderfully set up by Dr. Caldwell. In fact, the first 100 plus pages are not even on Hayek per se, but provide an excellent history of the early development of the Austrian School.

And with specific reference to this week's conference (and as a tangent to Michael's recent post on history generally), here is a lengthy quote from Caldwell on the importance of the history of economic thought:

Unless they had an undergraduate course in the history of economic thought or enough of an interest in the subject to pursue their studies independently, newly minted Ph.D.'s in economics today increasingly have no knowledge of the history of their discipline. They know the major names -- Smith and Marx and Keynes -- but their knowledge of these figures' ideas does not go much beyond the sound bite. Their exposure to less prominent figures, like Ricardo, is far more restricted ("Did he invent the Ricardian equivalence theorem?"). They certainly do not recognize names like Menger or Wieser, or Lerner or Lange, and have, of course, read none of them, not even the most famous. The only history they know might be dubbed theorist's history, in which the great name is invoked to set up a problem ("Hayek was concerned about information . . ."), the rest of the time being spent building a model that examines the problem.

The long term consequences of this downward spiral are equally daunting. Economists with no knowledge or appreciation of history are making decisions about its importance in the curriculum. If current trends continue, there will be no more history of thought taught by economists trained in the field, not even at the undergraduate level. (If none are trained in graduate school, there will eventually be no one to teach it at any level.) We will gradually but inevitably lose our touch with history. A science ignorant of its history is a science more likely to be arrogant as well as ignorant -- ignorant of both its arrogance and ignorance. It is also a science more likely to be led astray, more prone to divigations that a knowledge of history might have prevented. It is a sad fate.

PS to Professor Tullock: the world is not "going to pot," some students still choose to wear coat and tie. In the summer. In Virginia.

[I guess this counts as a book review (?)]