Document Type

Article

Language

eng

Publication Date

2-2012

Publisher

Taylor & Francis (Routledge)

Source Publication

European Journal of the History of Economic Thought

Source ISSN

0967-2567

Abstract

This paper examines the research and career of the late Warren J. Samuels (1933-2011), an influential institutionalist economist in the Wisconsin John Commons tradition and well-known historian and methodologist of economics. It discusses four main positions Samuels developed and held regarding the history of economic thought as intellectual history, the theory of economic policy, methodological pluralism, and the invisible hand doctrine. Among the views considered are: his matrix approach to meaningfulness, his characterization of intellectual systems, his emphasis on the centrality of the social order, his theory of economic policy as a neglected subject, his discourse analysis of language, his emphasis on the hermeneutic circle and critique of foundationalism, and argument that the invisible hand lacks ontological and epistemological credentials and functions as a means of social control and psychic balm. Much of the discussion is cast in terms of Samuels’ own reflections on what he believed is involved in being an historian of economics.

Comments

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in European Journal of the History of Economic Thought, Vol. 19, No. 1 (February 2012): 115-124, available online: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09672567.2012.652409. © 2012 Taylor & Francis. Used with permission.

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