The Chicago School’s coherence was constructed later by students and outsiders.

Evidence

One further difference distinguished the faculty at Chicago from their colleagues in London: they did not conceive of themselves as a purposive group. Although some of their students would go on to ascribe a retrospective coherence to their time at Chicago, Knight, Viner, and Simons demonstrated only limited affi nity for one another and little sense that they considered themselves members of an ideological community. Years later Knight recalled the greatly differing interests of the Chicago economists in those years, declaring fl atly that there was no “Midway monolith.” Viner emphasized that he was never a conscious participant in any “school,” and that if one existed, his membership would have been tenuous. … Chicago economists in the interwar years were fashioned into a group through the loose refl ections of certain students, colleagues, and successors, but one can accept the term only by denying the contrary impressions of its ostensible members. — Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion, 109

Categorization

• XREF: Parallels the retrospective-coherence problem in the Milgrom law-merchant work and in general historiography of movements — groups get defined by successors’ interests, not members’ self-understanding. — connects to: The Chicago School’s rise was part of a transnational postwar project of building neoliberalism. — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making…, 713
• SEED: Angle: ‘Schools of thought are invented, not born’ — how the appearance of intellectual unity is projected backward; relevant to any ‘movement’ from the Chicago School to artistic coteries.

Broader Connections

• The Chicago School’s rise was part of a transnational postwar project of building neoliberalism. #corroborates (0.75) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 713