Reconstructing the past: a response to four readers

Abstract

In this paper, the author of <I>How Economics Became a Mathematical Science</I> (Duke University Press, 2002) responds to four papers (from Paul Davidson, Sheila Dow, Donald Katzner,and J. Barkley Rosser Jr.) written for a symposium on his book. In addition to specific responses to points raised by the readers, the author argues, for economists, the historical commonplace that there can be no privileged perspective from which to view the past; there is no right way to write history, only more or less interesting ways.

Keywords:

• HISTORIOGRAPHY
• HISTORY OF ECONOMICS
• MATHEMATICAL ECONOMICS.