ABSTRACT

The reason we study the ideas of "dead economists," besides aesthetics or pure inrellectual curiosity, is the potential that such an inquiry will offer insights into how we can better understand our own economic reality. These insights are many and manifold, from a clearer understanding of the actual economic content of economic theories (before it gets permanently lost in mathematical fonnalism), to an explanation of why some topics are developed and overdeveloped (the search for the existence, uniqueness, and stability of general equilibrium comes immediately to mind) while others remain underdeveloped or ignored (the problem of unemploymenr before Keynes). However, the most important lesson that the histoty of economics teaches us is that we need to take a critical view of accepted economic doctrines, for they will inevitably hecome obsolete. l This IS especially rhe case wirh any economic dextrines that purport to depict universal "Truths." Moreover, this is even t he case for economic theories which, in their time and place, are substantially correct and accurate depictions of their contemporaty economic reality. This reality of the "relativitv of economic doctrines" is one of the great contributions Wemer Stark made to the history of economics. More so than all other historians of economic thought, past and present, Stark stressed that economic ideas must be, in fact can only be, understood in their historical and sodal and intellectual context, that economic theories, like economic phenomena, are historical and social artifacts and thus must be placed in their historical and social context to be meaningful. Furthermore, the dynamic of economic evolution is one of the main factors that causes economic theory to evolve and change.