Mark Blaug used to begin his history of economics course with an old Greek proverb: “the fox knows many little things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing”. He would then say that one could characterise most thinkers in the history of economic thought as either a fox or a hedgehog. As a student, I found that this character-driven view illuminated past economists’ theories in a fresh way and brought home to me the distinctiveness of their approaches. Nevertheless, after reading (...) his work, attending his course, listening to him at seminars, and becoming familiar with his ideas on the history and methodology of economics, one question has always remained unanswered in my mind: was Mark Blaug a fox or a hedgehog? (shrink)

Mark Blaug's contributions to economics were many and significant. This essay provides a review of Mark Blaug: Rebel with Many Causes, edited by Marcel Boumans and Matthias Klaes, which collects papers from a set of conferences organized in Blaug's memory.

Over time, Mark Blaug became increasingly sceptical of the merits of the approach to the history of economics that we find in his magnum opus, Economic theory in retrospect, first published in 1962, and increasingly leaned to favour 'historical' over 'rational' reconstructions. In this essay, I discuss Blaug's shifting historiographical position, and the changing terms of historiographical debate. I do so against the background of Blaug's personal life history and the increasingly beleaguered position the history of economic thought found itself (...) in after the Second World War. I argue that Blaug never resolved the tensions between historical and rational reconstructions, partly because he never fleshed out a viable notion of historical reconstruction. I trace Blaug's difficulty in doing so to his firm conviction that the history of economics should speak to economists, a conviction clearly present in his 2001 essay: "No history of ideas, please, we're economists". (shrink)

This paper discusses the development of the field of economic methodology during the last few decades emphasizing the early influence of the "shelf" of Popperian philosophy and the division between neoclassical and heterodox economics. It argues that the field of methodology has recently adopted a more naturalistic approach focusing primarily on the "new pluralist" subfields of experimental economics, behavioral economics, neuroeconomics, and related subjects.