Money has been called the human artifact that confirms the impossibility of disentangling the cultural and the symbolic from the economic. The terms of that entanglement are richly and rewardingly explored in this issue's articles by Helleiner, Curruthers and Espeland, and Siegel. The author assesses the many contributions made by these three articles. The author also considers how ideas about evidence and analysis are pursued in different disciplines. Can social scientists divorce empirical examples from historical contexts in order to substantiate or illustrate analytical strategies? Should they? This is posed primarily by Helleiner, and by Carruthers and Espeland, the latter of which comprises attempts to develop frameworks for subsequent empirical investigations. Siegel offers a useful contrast, in that its empiricism is deliberately sensitive to context.