Reflexões sobre a historiografia do pensamento econômico

Abstract

How to account for the wide diversity in the historiography of economic thought? And why bother about the history of economics? This paper is an attempt to tackle basic questions dealing with the relations between the philosophy of science and the intellectual history of economics. The main argument is that in order to understand why distinct accounts of the evolution of economics differ so much we need to look at the three fundamental methodological options underlying reconstructions of the past (i) externalism x internalism; (ii) relativism x absolutism; and (iii) antiquarism x anacronism. Though these options cannot account form all observed diversity in the historiography of economics, they seem to go a long way towards explaining it. The history of economic thought may be seen as a privileged laboratory to study the minds of economics at work.