ABSTRACT
At the beginning of his essay on Jacob Viner as inteUectual historian, the first essay in the collection to which this collection is a sequel, Donald Winch wrote that
Jacob Viner belonged to a generation of economists for whom the history of economic thought was neither a subspecialism within economics nor a hobby reserved for off-duty moments and the retirement years. A broad, though not necessarily profound, knowledge of those writings of past economists which had, for one reason or another, acquired classic status was a normal part of the early educational pattern; and this knowledge could keep its value later as a means of situating modern debates. No special virtue or vice was attached to this: it was more a matter of the relationship between the size of the accumulated stock of accepted knowledge and the rate at wh ich additions were being made to it than a sign of special learning or undue conservatism.
