At least for history of economics, I think it's harder to really grasp modern economic thinking without considering the layers it's built upon, the context ideas were developed within etc...
That's probably true for macro-economics. Alas that's also the part where people disagree about whether it made objective progress.
Micro-economics is much more approachable with experiments etc.
Btw, I didn't suggest to completely disregard history. Physics and civil engineering don't completely disregard their histories, either. But they also don't engage in constant navel gazing and re-hashing like a good chunk of the philosophers do.
Art or philosophy might or might not make progress. No one can say for sure. They are bad role models.