Putting Clio Back in Cliometrics

Dados Bibliográficos

ID4861552
AutoresLouise Gauthier (0000-0001-6639-5453, Paris 8 University Vincennes‐Saint‐Denis, autor correspondente), Laurent Gauthier (0000-0003-4644-7660)
Ano2022
Volume61
Fascículo2
Páginas289-311
Data de publicação2022-06-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoHistory and Theory (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0018-2656 • E-ISSN: 1468-2303
EditoraWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/hith.12260
OpenAlexW3183752588
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas4

This article makes the argument for renewed cliometrics that could serve history. Over the past century, history and economics have grown relying on each other, but an imbalance has appeared, as the space between history and economics has been occupied by the latter. Consequently, historians have tended to shun these fields of inquiry. I begin my analysis with a discussion of the complex set of separate domains that lie between history and economics, and I determine certain salient features that define them-in particular, the search for nomothetic explanations. I examine the reception of economic method by historians and point out that it has suffered both from this nomothetic angle and from the implicit presumption that economics is only applicable to the economy. Stressing the distinction between understanding and explaining in the philosophy of history, I show that, for historians, explaining should remain in the realm of history. I then propose that economics be considered a methodological auxiliary for understanding, a form of new cliometrics, which does not attempt to offer explanations. I also discuss some examples of using microeconomics as a critical methodology in the study of ancient Greece

Archaeology · Argument (complex analysis) · Economics · Epistemology · Nomothetic · Nomothetic and idiographic · Point (geometry) · Political science · Positive economics · Presumption · Realm · Set (abstract data type) · Social science · Sociology · Space (punctuation) · Computer Science · Historical Economic and Social Studies · History · Law · Mathematics · Philosophy