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Father of modern economics and first classical economist.
Masterpiece
The Wealth of NationsAn Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations is the opus magnum of Adam Smith, published in 1776. It is a clearly written account of economics at the dawn of the industrial revolution. The work is broken down into five books between two - 1776This article is about the year 1776. For the musical, see 1776 (musical Events January 10 Thomas Paine publishes Common Sense March 17 American Revolutionary War: British forces evacuate Boston, Massachusetts after George Washington places artillery overl
Adam Smith ( 1723– July 17, 1790) was a Scottish economistEconomics is the social science studying how society uses its limited resources to meet desires and wants. Put otherwise, economics studies what, how and for whom society produces. This involves analyzing the production, distribution and consumption of go and moral philosopher. His Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations was the first serious attempt to study the historical development of industry and commerce in Europe. It helped to create the modern academic discipline of economics and provided one of the best-known intellectual rationales for capitalism.
Smith was the son of the comptroller of the customs at Kirkcaldy, Fife, Scotland. The exact date of his birth is unknown, but he was baptized at Kirkcaldy on June 5, 1723, his father having died some six months previously.
At the age of about fifteen, Smith proceeded to the University of Glasgow, studying moral philosophy under "the never-to-be-forgotten" (as Smith called him) Francis Hutcheson. In 1740 he entered the Balliol College of the University of Oxford, but as William Robert Scott has said, "the Oxford of his time gave little if any help towards what was to be his lifework," and he relinquished his exhibition in 1746. In 1748 he began delivering public lectures in Edinburgh under the patronage of Lord Kames. Some of these dealt with rhetoric and belles-lettres, but later he took up the subject of "the progress of opulence," and it was then, in his middle or late 20s, that he first expounded the economic philosophy of "the obvious and simple system of natural liberty" which he was later to proclaim to the world in his Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. About 1750 he met David Hume, who became one of the closest of his many friends.
In 1751 Smith was appointed professor on logic at the University of Glasgow, transferring in 1752 to the chair of moral philosophy. His lectures covered the fields of ethics, rhetoric, jurisprudence, political economy, and "police and revenue." In 1759 he published his The Theory of Moral Sentiments, embodying some of his Glasgow lectures. This work, which established Smith's reputation in his day, was concerned with the how human communication depends on sympathy between speaker and listener. His capacity for fluent, persuasive, if rather rhetorical argument is much in evidence. He bases his explanation, not as the third Lord Shaftesbury and Hutcheson had done, on a special "moral sense", nor (like Hume) to any decisive extent on utility, but on sympathy. There has been considerable controversy as how far there is contradiction or contrast between Smith's emphasis in the Moral Sentiments on sympathy as a fundamental human motive, and, on the other hand, the key role of self-interest in The Wealth of Nations. Self-interest played a more prominent role in the revised version of the Theory of Moral Sentiments (TMS) which appeared in 1783. In TMS he seems to position further prominence on the broad synchronization of human intention and behavior under a beneficent Providence, while in the latter, in spite of the general theme of "the invisible hand" promoting the harmony of interests, Smith finds many more occasions for pointing out cases of conflict and of the narrow selfishness of human motives. Even so, in the "Theory of Moral Sentiments" Smith puts forward a conception of Man that is not far different from the lower beasts:
Smith now began to give more attention to jurisprudence and economics in his lecture and less to his theories of morals. An impression can be obtained as to the development of his ideas on political economy from the notes of his lectures taken down by a student in about 1763 which were later edited by E. Cannan (Lectures on Justice, Police, Revenue and Arms, 1896), and from what Scott, its discoverer and publisher, describes as "An Early Draft of Part of The Wealth of Nations", which he dates about 1763.
At the end of 1763 Smith obtained a lucrative post as tutor to the young duke of Buccleuch and resigned his professorship. From 1764- 66 he traveled with his pupil, mostly in France, where he came to know such intellectual leaders as Anne Turgot, Jean D'Alembert, André Morellet, Helvétius and, in particular, Francois Quesnay, the head of the Physiocratic school whose work he much respected. On returning home to Kirkcaldy he devoted much of the next ten years to his magnum opus, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, which appeared in 1776. It was very well-received and popular, and Smith became famous. In 1778 he was appointed to a comfortable post as commissioner of customs in Scotland and went to live with his mother in Edinburgh. He died there on July 17, 1790, after a painful illness. He had apparently devoted a considerable part of his income to numerous secret acts of charity. He neither married nor fathered children.
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