Introduction

In his magisterial History of Economic Analysis, Schumpeter stated that: ‘Filiation of Scientific Ideas – the process by which men’s efforts to understand economic phenomena, produce, improve and pull down analytic structures . . . has met with more inhibitions in our field than it has in almost all others’ (Schumpeter 1954: 6). One of the characteristics of this slow rate of progress was the fact that, according to Schumpeter: ‘Much more than in physics have results been lost on the way or remained in abeyance for centuries. We shall meet with some instances that are little short of appalling.’