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Tony Lawson and the history of economic thought

Tony Lawson’s writings, including those in the history of economics, have an ontological orientation. Several scholars influenced by him likewise practice an ontologically oriented history of economic thought. However, the programme for this sort of history has not been explicitly articulated. In the present paper, we argue that Lawson’s The nature of heterodox economics contains implicitly an ontologically oriented programme in the history of economic thought. We also illustrate the achievements of this programme by scrutinising the writings on the later Austrians by Lawson and his associates. Finally, we assess the programme and its achievements in the light of Lawson’s statement that engaging in social-scientific ontology is preferable to doing history of economic thought.