Adam Smith

Scottish moral philosopher and political economist (1723–1790)

AI overview

Adam Smith was a Scottish philosopher and economist from the 1700s who developed influential ideas about how economies work and how people behave morally in society. His work, particularly his thoughts on free markets and self-interest, shaped modern economic thinking and remains widely studied today.

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Person · Open Library

Born: 16 Jun 1723
Died: 17 Jul 1790
Works: 645

Top works

Handbok för statshushållningen efter Adam Smiths grundsattser
An inquiry into the nature and causes of the wealth of nations
A letter from Governor Pownall to Adam Smith ... being an examination of several points of doctrine, laid down in his Inquiry into the nature and causes of the wealth of nations
Letters on infidelity
An Inquiry into the nature and cause of the wealth of nations

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Music · MusicBrainz

Type: Person
Gender: Male
Origin: United States
Active from: 1723
Active to: 1790

acoustic rockamericanfolk rockindieindie folkindie pop

Official site Discogs Stream

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Listeners · Last.fm

Listeners: 3,447
Total plays: 26,638

Recent publications · Crossref

5 total works indexed

Bias in meta-analysis detected by a simple, graphical test
· 1997 · cited 47,717x
Colorimetric Method for Determination of Sugars and Related Substances
· 1956 · cited 41,857x
SciPy 1.0: fundamental algorithms for scientific computing in Python
· 2020 · cited 34,522x
GROMACS: High performance molecular simulations through multi-level parallelism from laptops to supercomputers
· 2015 · cited 24,188x
Array programming with NumPy
· 2020 · cited 22,013x

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Quotes

“Poor David Hume is dying very fast, but with great cheerfulness and good humour and with more real resignation to the necessary course of things then any whining Christian ever dyed with pretended resignation to the will of God.”
“How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it except the pleasure of seeing it.”
“Every faculty in one man is the measure by which he judges of the like faculty in another. I judge of your sight by my sight, of your ear by my ear, of your reason by my reason, of your resentment by my resentment, of your love by my love. I neither have, nor can have, any other way of judging about them.”
“As to love our neighbour as we love ourselves is the great law of Christianity, so it is the great precept of nature to love ourselves only as we love our neighbour, or what comes to the same thing, as our neighbour is capable of loving us.”
“Hatred and anger are the greatest poison to the happiness of a good mind.”
“This disposition to admire, and almost to worship, the rich and powerful, and to despise or, at least, neglect persons of poor and mean conditions, though necessary both to establish and to maintain the distinction of ranks and the order of society, is, at the same time, the great and most universal cause of the corruption of our moral sentiments.”

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Wikidata facts

Image: AdamSmith.jpg

Show 10 more facts

Commons category: Adam Smith (philosopher)
date of death: 1790-07-17
date of birth: 1723-06-00
Commons gallery: Adam Smith
name in native language: Adam Smith
Commons Creator page: Adam Smith
start of work period: 1748-00-00
date of baptism: 1723-06-05
P12749: Damian Kallabis
Stack Exchange tag: economics.stackexchange.com/tags/adam-smith

Sources (9)

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Works in European collections

16 objects attributed to Adam Smith, held across European museums, libraries & archives · via Europeana

Fragment Sur Les Colonies En Général, Et Sur Celles Des Anglois En Particulier : Traduit De L'Anglois

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Article

Adam Smith (baptised 16 June [O.S. 5 June] 1723 – 17 July 1790) was a Scottish economist and philosopher who was a pioneer in the field of political economy and key figure during the Scottish Enlightenment. Seen by many as the "father of economics", or the "father of capitalism", he is primarily known for two classic works: The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759) and An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776). The latter, often abbreviated as The Wealth of Nations, is regarded as his magnum opus, marking the inception of modern economic scholarship as a comprehensive system and an academic discipline. Smith refuses to explain the distribution of wealth and power in terms of divine will and instead appeals to natural, political, social, economic, legal, environmental and technological factors, as well as the interactions among them. The work is notable for its contribution to economic theory, particularly in its exposition of the concept of absolute advantage.

Born in Kirkcaldy, Fife, he studied social philosophy at the University of Glasgow and at the University of Oxford, where he was one of the only students to benefit from scholarships set up by John Snell. Following his graduation, he delivered a successful series of public lectures at the University of Edinburgh, that met with acclaim. This led to a collaboration with David Hume during the Scottish Enlightenment. Smith obtained a professorship at Glasgow, where he taught moral philosophy. During this period, he wrote and published The Theory of Moral Sentiments. Subsequently, he assumed a tutoring position that facilitated travel throughout Europe, where he encountered intellectual figures of his era.