Adam Smith’s Methodology: Imagination, Rhetoric, and Rene Descartes (Routledge Studies in the History of Economics)

Most previous studies of Adam Smith’s methodology, with a few exceptions, have placed considerable emphasis on the undeniable influence of Newtonian physics and Humean empiricism. This book argues that other sources are at least as important: Smith’s own didactic rhetoric and the methodological writings of René Descartes.Smith began his public life in 1748, lecturing on rhetoric in Edinburgh.During this time he also wrote a history of astronomy, tracing its development from the age of mythical thought to Descartes (later incorporating Newton’s ideas).In his History of Astronomy, he was less concerned with the truth value of theories than with their ability to quiet the human imagination by systematically combining numerous phenomena under a few unifying principles.In his lectures on rhetoric, he considered this approach to be the best method of didactic exposition.In both cases, he attached the greatest importance to one of the authors he cited most often between 1748 and 1763, Descart