ADAM SMITH: AN ASPECT OF MODERN ECONOMICS?*
| Published date | 01 June 1979 |
| Author | Andrew S. Skinner |
| Date | 01 June 1979 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9485.1979.tb00538.x |
Scottish
Journal
of
Political Economy,
Vol.
26,
No.
2,
June
1979
ADAM SMITH: AN ASPECT
OF
MODERN
ECONOMICS
?*
ANDREW
S.
SKINNER
University
of’
Glasgow
I
We are all familiar with the old Marshallian definition of economics as the
“study of mankind in the ordinary business of life”
(1949,
p.
1)
and with the
typical view that the subject “has
.
. .
as its purpose firstly to acquire know-
ledge for its own sake, and secondly to throw light on practical issues”
@.
33).
In the same vein we are familiar with the methodology
of
science as expounded
by Marshall and his successors, namely that we
must
begin with the acts of
observation, description, and classification, before using the techniques of
induction and deduction, respectively, in establishing basic principles and for
the clarification of phenomena.
As
Gustav Schmoller remarked, in a passage
which Marshall quoted with approval
:
Induction and deduction are both needed for scientific thought as the left
and the right foot are needed for walking (p.
24).
To
this we must add the classic Marshallian warning, namely that the
“function of analysis and deduction in economics
is
not to forge a few long
chains of reasoning, but to forge rightly many short chains and single connect-
ing links” (p.
638),
eventually leading to the formulation of general laws.
Again as noted by Marshall, it
is
often argued that:
A
science progresses by increasing the number and exactness of its laws;
by submitting them to tests
of
ever increasing severity; and by enlarging
their scope till a single broad law contains and supersedes a number of
narrower laws, which have been shown to be special instances of it
(p.
25).
In short, the procedures used in economics were presented as being the same
as those associated with the other sciences, while in addition the subject shares
with many of them an opportunity to use mathematical techniques. While
Marshall himself is not always remembered for his work in this particular
field, he clearly believed that “a training in mathematics is helpful by giving
command over a marvellously terse and exact language for exposing clearly
*
This paper is
a
modified version of a lecture given in Chuoh University (Tokyo) in
April
1978.
I
am
indebted to members of that seminar for a number of helpful comments,
and
in
particular to Professors Tamura, Miyazaki and Okada.
I
have
also
benefited from
the comments
of
an anonymous referee.
Date of receipt of
ha1
manuscript:
27
October
1978.
8 109
110
A.
S.
SKINNER
some general relations and some short processes of economic reasoning”
(p.
644).
For, as Marshall’s contemporary,
W.
S.
Jevons had earlier observed,
since economics deals in terms of quantities, proportions, and equalities “it
must be a mathematical science in matter if not in language”
(1970,
p.
44).
However, points such as these were old, even at the time of writing. In the
eighteenth century for example, algebra had been employed in the solution of
moral, as well as economic, questi0ns.l While the calculus was not formally
applied in handling economic problems, the technique itself had a profound
effect
on
the moral sciences, associated as
it
was with the introduction of
dynamic analogies of the kind which inform Smith‘s works (and which present
a sharp contrast with those used in the years following the so-called “Marginal
Revolution”).2 Moreover, as Jevons had recognised, writers often reason
mathematically without employing the language of that discipline
:
a good
example being provided by Smith himself. In contrast to those who compare
Smith unfavourably with Ricardo, Samuelson has also found in the
Wealth
of
Nations
“a complete and valuable theoretical model” which is mathematic-
ally consistent, leading him to the conclusion that Smith emerges
“with
flying
colours from a modern post-mortem, provided we conduct it with the
modicum of charity due to an early pioneer”
(1977,
pp.
42,44).
The methodology appropriate to what is often called the “standard view”
of science has also been
known
for centuries. One classic, and influential
example, is to be found in Galileo’s discovery of the ballistic parabola,
founded as it is upon the interdependence of the analytical and synthetic
method^.^
But of course the most important modem exampIe was that
provided by Newton. Colin McLaurin, one of his most influential expositors
in the eighteenth century, expressed the matter in this form
:
It is evident that, as in mathematics,
so
in natural philosophy, the investiga-
tion of difficult things by the method of
analysis,
ought ever to precede
the method of composition, or the
synthesis.
For in any other way, we can
never be sure that we assume the principles that really obtain in nature; and
that our system, after we have composed it with great labour, is not mere
dream and illusion
(1748,
p.
9).
It was
this
methodology which is believed to have been employed in the
development
of
the moral sciences in the eighteenth, as much as in the
nineteenth century. Nor can there be any doubt that economics was originally
conceived in the image of Newtonian physics. One writer (Pownall,
1776,
p.
3)
in fact called for the formulation of laws that “might become
principia
to the
knowledge of politick operations, as Mathematicks are to Mechanicks,
Astronomy and the other sciences” and found in the
Wealth
of
Nations
just
Notably by Francis Hutcheson, Smith’s former teacher; cf. Olson
(1975),
p.
21.
Cf.
A.
0.
Lovejoy’s suggestion that the Liebnitian calculus which brought the “notion
of
the continuum into fashion” was one of the forces which prepared men’s minds
for
the
acceptance
of
the idea of evolution. “Buffon and the Problem
of
Species”
in
Glass
(1959),
’See
E.
Cassirer
(1951),
pp.
10-11
and for a full description,
J.
W. N. Watkins
(1965),
chapter
3.
pp.
89-90.
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