Warren J. Samuels Each book in this series explores the present status
of its field in terms of where it is, how it got there, the existing
tensions within the field, and something of how the field might develop
in the future. Each book presumes that work in each field is neither
settled nor unequivocal. Each book attempts to comprehend its field as
an evolving, developmental process or set or efforts. This particular
book, covering neoclassical economics, is the third of three in the
field of the History of Economic Thought. The others are Pre-Classical
Economic Thought, edited by S. Todd Lowry, and Classical Political
Economy, edited by William O. Thweatt. Each one conducts the same kind
of analysis as the others in the series, with the understanding that
here we are dealing with the history of interpretation, rather than a
substantive body of analysis of a certain aspect of the economy: for
example, labor or international trade. (That understanding must be com-
plex and subtle, inasmuch as revision of interpretation of earlier ideas
is part of the process-both cause and consequence-of re-analyzing the
economy. ) In this group we are interested in how recent and
contemporary writers have interpreted the history of economic thought
differently, both among themselves and from earlier writers. 1
NEOCLASSICAL ECONOMIC lHEORY 2 Several topics must be discussed to place
such work in perspective, in part as it is here applied to the history
of the interpretation of neoclassical economics.