Comment: Please May We Join the Veblen Club? - A Response to John Hall
We are grateful to John Hall (2011) for his review published in this journal of our book Darwin’s Conjecture (Hodgson and Knudsen 2010). Hall summarises our work in one paragraph, and then proceeds to raise issues without any direct reference, or quotation from, our book. The foundation of his critique, he admits, is “based on what appears absent.” He accuses us of “subtle efforts to omit Veblen‟s contribution.” He concludes that our book takes “social science thinking further and further away from its foundational Veblenian roots.” But he provides no evidence for this. In fact, we refer to Veblen on no less than twenty pages in our book. Hall claims that we raise Veblen and then his thinking is “glibly dropped.” In fact, our references to Veblen extend to later chapters of the book. Our bibliography cites several of Veblen‟s works, including three of his books.