Historical Epistemology and the History of Economics:Views Through the Lens of Practice

2022 Hes Presidential Address: The History of Economics as Economic Self-Portraiture

“…The attention to the ordinary became possible only due to the use of a specific lens, namely the "lens of practice." Thomas Stapleford (2017) discusses the consequences of such a lens. He defines practices as "collections of behavior that are teleological, subject to normative evaluation by broader groups, and exhibit regularities across people in a constrained portion of time and space" (p. 118).…”

“…One of the reasons that a history of practices might differ from a history of thought is that the lens of practice acknowledges that ideas do not travel in time: “texts cannot be treated as vessels for discrete ideas. Instead, every novel text must be interpreted in its new locale, and that interpretation relies on existing hermeneutical and theoretical practices” (Stapleford 2017, p. 120). Ideas do not travel through ether; they are written down in letters, printed in publications, spoken out at meetings, discussed and interpreted at specific sites, with all the usual noise between sender and receiver.…”

To Kill a Black Swan: The Credibility Revolution at CEDE, 2000–2018

“…As Hacking (1990) and Stapleford (2017) argue, the practices involved in the production of knowledge settle what is to be objective. Therefore, I trace the thread that ties the epistemological shift at CEDE in microeconometrics following the conceptions of objectivity.…”

From classical political economy to “Indian Economics”: a case of contestation and adaptation in universities in colonial India

“…(Secord, 2004, p. 665). Thomas Stapleford (2017) looks at history of economics as a “set of practices” that change over time rather than ideas which are static. An approach leaning towards understanding the history of knowledge as practices rather than ideas or economic thought is especially conducive to merging it with history of education, setting up a circulation of knowledge framework to examine the interaction of political forces with knowledge systems.…”