Five minutee has not found me the link but there is a much upvoted post on the value of reading the Classics or Great Works of a field. IIRC Vassar commented that outside of fields like Math or Chemistry where progress is completely unambiguous it's a good idea. Darwin invented, conceived and distinguished natural and sexual selection in his greatest work. Despite this sexual selection was more or less rediscovered from scratch starting in the 70's.

Macroeconomists are still talking about DSGE models, right now, after the Great Recession. I recall a recent crooked timber post about a macro survey book which (basically ignored Keynes and Keynesianism)[http://crookedtimber.org/2014/02/10/macroeconomics-made-easy/]. If population genetics can ignore Darwin to its detriment macroeconomics is entirely capable of underselling Keynes.