“Influence” in Historical Explanation: Mary Morgan’s Traveling Facts and the Context of Influence
Including a Symposium on Mary Morgan: Curiosity, Imagination, and Surprise
ISBN: 978-1-78756-424-4, eISBN: 978-1-78756-423-7
Publication date: 24 October 2018
Abstract
In my years as a student of Mary Morgan and later as her junior peer, I observed that one concept prompted her to react with caution and skepticism. That common notion was “influence.” In this chapter, I follow her cues to ask what are the legitimate grounds for claims of influence in historical explanation. Morgan’s writings have made us aware that the story of social science cannot be captured in simple reckonings of influence, and that long chains of actions are required to seat an idea in the mind, and longer still to set it to paper. My contribution to problematizing influence is to list the pitfalls of its uncritical use but also, once suitably redefined, its potential contribution to analysis. To illustrate my claims, I propose a test case, to study the “influence of Mary Morgan.”
Keywords
Acknowledgements
Acknowledgments
I am grateful to the suggestions and criticisms of Mary Morgan and of the participants at the conference “Curiosity, Imagination and surprise” at the University of Utrecht, September 2017. A special debt of thanks is due to the patience and care Marcel Boumans and Hsiang-Ke Chao devoted to that meeting and to this collection.
Citation
Mata, T. (2018), "“Influence” in Historical Explanation: Mary Morgan’s Traveling Facts and the Context of Influence", Including a Symposium on Mary Morgan: Curiosity, Imagination, and Surprise (Research in the History of Economic Thought and Methodology, Vol. 36B), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 73-91. https://doi.org/10.1108/S0743-41542018000036B006
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2018 Emerald Publishing Limited