PRACTICING PPE: THE CASE OF ADAM SMITH

2017 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 277-295 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ryan Patrick Hanley
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Adam Smith ◽  
Pattern Detection ◽  
Knowledge Generation ◽  
Synthetic Approach ◽  
History Of Astronomy ◽  
Discrete Component ◽  
History Of ◽  
Point Of Reference

Abstract:Adam Smith has long been celebrated as a polymath, and his wide interests in and contributions to each of the discrete component fields of PPE have long been appreciated. Yet Smith deserves the attention of practitioners of PPE today not simply for his substantive insights, but for the ways in which his inquiries into these different fields were connected. Smith’s inquiry was distinguished by a synthetic approach to knowledge generation, and specifically to generating knowledge with applications exportable to other fields. Further, Smith’s investigations of various areas of study led him to recognize patterns in and across these fields, and his sensitivity to such patterns helped guide his inquiry and render it a connected enterprise. This paper examines several of Smith’s discrete inquiries in the history of astronomy, language, moral philosophy, and political economy, to show how he employed the techniques of pattern detection that he practiced in each of these inquiries to the task of generating new insights into new fields of inquiry. In so doing, Smith not only distinguished himself as an early practitioner of what we today identify with PPE, but he also provides a useful point of reference for those doing PPE today.

1. Life and times

2018 ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
Christopher J. Berry
Keyword(s):  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Adam Smith ◽  
History Of Astronomy ◽  
Scottish Enlightenment ◽  
Literary Style ◽  
History Of ◽  
Wealth Of Nations

There is more to Adam Smith than The Wealth of Nations, a book on the workings of the economy. He wrote an important treatise on moral philosophy, published an exceptionally well-informed history of astronomy, and was an author who cared about literary style and how to communicate both orally and in print. ‘Life and times’ provides a biographical outline from his birth in Kirkcaldy in 1723 to his student years at Glasgow University and Balliol College, Oxford, and his return to Glasgow University as the Professor of Logic in 1751. It also describes the sort of society in which Smith lived, with the backdrop of the 1707 Treaty of the Union and the Scottish Enlightenment.

Du «spectateur impartial» au «travailleur impartial», un commentaire sur la relation entre philosophie morale et économie politique chez Adam Smith selon Jean Mathiot

Dialogue ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 50 (3) ◽  
pp. 469-509 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gilles Campagnolo
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Adam Smith ◽  
The State ◽  
Moral Sentiments ◽  
Impartial Spectator ◽  
History Of ◽  
Économie Politique ◽  
Wealth Of Nations ◽  
The Church

ABSTRACT: As Smith freed moral philosophy from former control bodies (the Church, the state), the Scottish philosopher opened the field for a scientific political economy. In hisAdam Smith. Philosophie et économie(Paris, Presses universitaires de France, 1990, p. 45), Jean Mathiot asked :«Should then one wonder that his [Smith’s] audacious stand became the historical grounding stone for political economy, then bringing recognition as an objectively-grounded field of knowledge?»Mathiot’s text and thought have been little debated to this day; this essay is meant to fill that gap, in particular with regard to the history of Smith’s reception in France. Mathiot sought to understand better the “impartial spectator” using a new character whom he claimed Smith was implicitly sketching, and whom he called “the impartial laborer”. To Mathiot’s mind, from theTheory of moral sentiments(1759) to theWealth of Nations(1776), the link is nothing else than Smith’s own philosophy.

THE ECONOMIST AND THE ECONOMIST’S AUDIENCE

2019 ◽  
Vol 41 (03) ◽  
pp. 335-341
Author(s):  
Steven G. Medema
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Adam Smith ◽  
Classical System ◽  
Public Realm ◽  
Harriet Martineau ◽  
The Public ◽  
History Of Economics ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
The Masses

The history of economics, properly read, is very much a history of economics in the public sphere. Sir William Petty developed his most important insights in the process of providing advice on taxation to the monarch. Adam Smith wrote with a view to influencing the habits of thought of both the educated layman and policy makers. Jane Marcet and Harriet Martineau brought early classical political economy to the masses. David Ricardo formulated foundational elements of the nineteenth-century classical system writing policy pamphlets and then entered Parliament with a view to putting policy making on a solid economic footing. Karl Marx’s intended audience was anything but the practitioners of the emerging science of political economy. Alfred Marshall buried his technical analysis in appendices to maximize the exposure of his work. John Maynard Keynes’s influence can be ascribed, without too much injustice, as much to his effectiveness outside the walls of Cambridge as within them and to the use by others of his ideas in that same public realm. Yet, despite this lengthy history of economists’ engagements with various publics, including those pulling the levers of policy, those writing on the history of economics have focused far more intently on the history of theory and the implications for the construction of a body of thought known as “economic analysis” than on the interplay among economists, economic ideas, and the public realm. It is as if the economic conversation went on solely within the space of academic departments of economics, even though those spaces are very recent creations.

Adam Smith and the problem of unintended consequences

2020 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 219-236
Author(s):  
Lorenzo Infantino
Keyword(s):  
Adam Smith ◽  
Unintended Consequences ◽  
Common Denominator ◽  
History Of Astronomy ◽  
Research Activity ◽  
Public Power ◽  
Third Person ◽  
History Of ◽  
Direct Outcome ◽  
Enormous Number

Over the years, libraries have accumulated an enormous number of books concerning the work of Adam Smith. Yet, research covering the methodology adopted by the great Scot occupies very little space. This is probably due to the fact that, while Smith was an all-round scholar, specialisation in research activity has progressively reduced the scope of knowledge of each of us. It is therefore rare to find one researcher covering Smith’s entire opus. If, however, we manage to overcome the barriers of specialisation, it is possible to perceive a common denominator that holds the various phases of Smith’s activity together. This denominator is methodological in nature. From his History of astronomy, Smith set himself the problem of the unintended consequences of intentional human actions. He understood that looking at everything that happens as a direct outcome of human will or divine will prevents us from seeing that there is a ‘third person’ that we must take into account: social interaction – that is to say, the process of co-adaptation of individual plans from which, without any design on our part, our rules and institutions are born. Attention to unintended consequences is present in every one of Smith’s works, and it touches on topics ranging from the origin of moral rules to the formation of the self, and from social cooperation to the delimitation of the sphere of intervention of public power.

Dugald Stewart on intellectual character

1997 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 307-320 ◽  
Author(s):  
JENNIFER TANNOCH-BLAND
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Political Economy ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
Scottish Enlightenment ◽  
Intellectual Culture ◽  
Thomas Reid ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Intellectual Character ◽  
History Of

Dugald Stewart (1753–1828) lectured in astronomy and political economy, held the chair of mathematics at Edinburgh University from 1775 to 1785, then the chair of moral philosophy from 1785 to 1810, and wrote extensively on metaphysics, political economy, ethics, philology, aesthetics, psychology and the history of philosophy and the experimental sciences. He is commonly regarded as the last voice of the Scottish Enlightenment, the articulate disciple of Thomas Reid, father of Scottish common sense philosophy. Recently some historians have begun to rediscover elements of the contribution Stewart made to early nineteenth-century British intellectual culture, and his Collected Works have been republished with a new introduction by Knud Haakonssen.

Adam Smith: Moral and Political Philosophy

Philosophy ◽  
2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Craig Smith
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Moral Psychology ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Adam Smith ◽  
Scottish Enlightenment ◽  
History Of ◽  
Technical Details ◽  
Wealth Of Nations ◽  
The University ◽  
The 19Th Century

Adam Smith (1723–1790) has become known as the father of economics. His reputation as the author of the Wealth of Nations has eclipsed his contributions to other areas of philosophy. Smith was Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Glasgow and a key figure in the Scottish Enlightenment. His Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759) was well-regarded at the time but faded from the philosophical canon in the 19th century and has only recently been subject to a revival of interest among philosophers. Smith’s thought was dismissed as moral psychology or as proto-utilitarian political economy until a revival in interest stemming largely from the publication of a critical edition of his works in the 1970s. Recent years have seen a renaissance in interest in Smith among moral philosophers. This has been accompanied by the first serious analysis of Smith’s thinking on rhetoric and the philosophy of science. This bibliography focuses on Smith’s moral and political philosophy. There is a very large literature on the technical details his economic theory and his contribution to the history of that discipline, but that will be mentioned here only when illuminating for discussions of his moral and political thinking.

PHILOSOPHICAL HISTORY AND THE SCIENCE OF MAN IN SCOTLAND: ADAM FERGUSON'S RESPONSE TO ROUSSEAU

2013 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 543-568 ◽  
Author(s):  
IAIN MCDANIEL
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
Roman Republic ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Adam Smith ◽  
The State ◽  
Scottish Enlightenment ◽  
Art And Culture ◽  
History Of

Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Discourse on the Origin and the Foundations of Inequality is now recognized to have played a fundamental role in the shaping of Scottish Enlightenment political thought. Yet despite some excellent studies of Rousseau's influence on Adam Smith, his impact on Smith's contemporary, Adam Ferguson, has not been examined in detail. This article reassesses Rousseau's legacy in eighteenth-century Scotland by focusing on Ferguson's critique of Rousseau in his Essay on the History of Civil Society (1767), his History of the Progress and Termination of the Roman Republic (1783), and his lectures and published writings in moral philosophy. Ferguson's differences from Rousseau were more pronounced than is sometimes assumed. Not only did Ferguson offer one of the most substantial eighteenth-century refutations of the Genevan's thinking on sociability, nature, art, and culture, he also provided an alternative to the theoretical history of the state set out in the Discourse on Inequality.

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