Abstract
This chapter focuses on the history of economics. The history of economics is not necessary to study theories of present day economics. Economic theories of the past, which are no longer included in the theoretical system of contemporary economics, are those theories that have once been refuted by the empirical test in the past. Revisiting past theories, which are false is not necessary either to understand contemporary theories which are currently regarded as valid, or to develop them further into more generalized or refined ones. Consideration of why economists made mistakes in the past may be left to psychological or sociological studies of research activities. The continuous process of conjectures and refutations described in the chapter is a popularized text-book version of Popper's theoretical model of the development of sciences. It is interesting to learn how several men of genius and many earnest scholars faced the economic problems of their days and what kind of economic theories have been developed in the past to solve them. In the history of economics, there were several revolutions, such as the marginal revolution and the Keynesian revolution. If these revolutions in the history of economics are scientific revolutions in the sense of Kuhn, the study of a pre-Keynesian paradigm is not necessary to understand a post-Keynesian paradigm, as there is no bridge for communicating between two paradigms.
Published Version
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