How is adam smith

His father, also Adam, was a lawyer, but he died six months before the son Adam was born. His mother Margaret , twenty-nine when she gave birth, never re-married, and Adam was a devoted son throughout her long life—she only died in , predeceasing her son by just two years.

Dugald Stewart — , Smith's first biographer, who knew him and was able to gain additional information from contemporaries, remarks that Adam was a p. He attended the local school in Kirkcaldy from about the age of eight and benefited from the rigour and enthusiasm of a new master.

Smith entered Glasgow University founded in at the early—but for the time not unusual—age of fourteen. His school-gained proficiency in the classics was such that he was effectively able to by-pass the early years in the curriculum devoted to Latin and Greek.

It is not certain why Glasgow was chosen. More positively there may have been a relative an aunt in Glasgow, a circumstance that W. Scott conjectures would have been an important consideration for his mother Scott : 28 cf.

Ian Ross observes that his father had been made a Glasgow burgess and proffers that as a reason to carry some weight in choice of University Ross : At Glasgow, Smith studied under some of the leading scholars of the day. He was taught mathematics by Robert Simson, who was or became a leading authority on Euclid Smith owned a copy of the second edition of his Sectionum Conicarum.

In a letter towards the end of his life, Smith pays eloquent tribute to his abilities and virtues as the professor of moral philosophy Corr and this, despite the fact that in his Theory of Moral Sentiments TMS Smith openly disagreed with his teacher's views of benevolence and moral sense. In Smith was awarded a Snell Scholarship to study at Balliol College, Oxford this is still in existence today and Tom Campbell the author of Chapter 27 held the same scholarship.

The purpose of this scholarship, according to the original bequest, was to enable its holders to prepare for ordination in the Church of England and join the Episcopal Church in Scotland but even before Smith took it up this provision had been nullified Phillipson : Smith stayed at Oxford until When Smith first read Hume's Treatise of Human Nature 40 is not known definitively but that he did so during his Oxford sojourn would seem difficult to deny.

On his return to Scotland in he returned to live with his mother in Kirkcaldy but in he moved to Edinburgh where, thanks to the patronage of Henry Home — —later ennobled on his appointment as a judge as Lord Kames—he was invited to give a series of lectures on rhetoric and later though the evidence is less secure on law and philosophy.

What is certain is that Smith's lectures were successful he repeated them and, with the continuing support of Home and, decisively, Archibald Campbell — , Earl of Ilay later Duke of Argyll , Smith returned to Glasgow University.

He was appointed the Professor of Logic in There was one other candidate and although the vote for Smith was unanimous his rival George Muirhead was no cipher and later became Professor of Oriental Languages and then Humanity at Glasgow Ross : Smith's appointment necessitated that he read a dissertation De Origine Idearum Scott : quoting the official University Minute and that he sign the Confession of Faith, a document embodying Calvinist theology, before the Presbytery of Glasgow.

The Kirk maintained a formal link with the University which earlier in the century had been source of dispute with some bearing on Simson's father, as will be noted below.

Smith would appear to have had no qualms about signing this document, but it would be highly presumptive to read into this any indication as to his own beliefs if he has any such they would be of general Deistic sort see Evensky , Otteson , Hanley and for Smith on religion generally see Gavin Kennedy's chapter below.

In Smith was appointed, without competition, Professor of Moral Philosophy. He succeeded Thomas Craigie, who had moved from St Andrews, to take on the Chair on Hutcheson's death, and whose short tenure was marked by ill health and an early death. Smith held that post until he left academic life in Smith professed on a wide variety of subjects.

Beyond courses in philosophy and jurisprudence he also discoursed on history, literature, and language and a series of notes of his lectures, on Rhetoric and Belles-Lettres, have been discovered and published see the discussions below by Michael Amrozowicz, Jan Swearingen, and Catherine Labio. Although in his will he asked for his manuscripts to be destroyed he did allow some essays to be published.

The latter is notable not only for the breadth of Smith's knowledge but also for his attempt to link the development of different astronomical accounts to a basic human propensity to seek order.

In the University awarded him a LL. TMS appeared in and drew on his lectures. It went through six editions in his lifetime and the final one, containing extensive revisions appeared in the year of his death What the simple fact of this chronology tells us is that Smith's commitment to the moral point of view endured alongside and beyond the publication of WN, his second great book published in Although by that date Smith had left Glasgow, we know, from student notes that have survived, that he had already considered many of its leading themes in his Glasgow classrooms.

Smith left the University in for the more lucrative post of tutor and companion to the year-old Duke of Buccleuch; a position obtained through the influence of the Duke's father-in-law, Charles Townsend. This was not to be Smith's last contact because in he was elected Rector of the University a largely formal post.

On leaving Glasgow he travelled with his charge to France, settled in Toulouse but typically we know little of what he did there, though this period is the focus of concentrated research by Phillippe Massot-Bordenave.

Smith visited, and resided for a while in, Geneva and met Voltaire who lived nearby at Ferney and of whom Smith had a high opinion. Armed with introductions, Smith visited Paris where he mingled with a number of the literary men and some women of the French Enlightenment. Quesnay was the formative thinker of the Physiocratic school. We know Smith was familiar with the Physiocrat's writings.

It is certainly far-fetched to claim that these meetings, and these writings, were decisive in the formation of Smith's arguments see Nerio Naldi's Chapter. Smith's tutorship was cut short in by the unfortunate death of his pupil's brother, who had been with them since He moved to Edinburgh taking his mother with him in when, again with the support of the Buccleuch connection, he was appointed a Customs Commissioner.

This post paid well and Smith p. The final sixth edition of the latter was an extensive revision and the source of much subsequent commentary as can be seen in the chapters that follow. As to Smith the man, his own reticence means relying principally on the testimony of others. As Stewart continues to depict him, the portrait that emerges is of an introverted, self-contained man, given to absent-mindedness and taciturnity in public. Smith never sat for his portrait itself unusual among his friends and, aside from Tassie's work, there only exists a stylized memorial print from John Kay.

In what sort of society did Smith live? What follows is an indicative survey to help situate Smith without making any claims that he was in some way a passive product of his times.

This survey will touch upon the political, economic, religious, and educational institutions and conclude with a few words on the informal linkages between them. The genesis lies in the seventeenth century. The Treaty of Union gave the Scots as Scots little direct political power only 16 nobles in the Lords and about 8 per cent of the complement of the Commons. But the Treaty allowed the Scots to retain their own legal system and their own form of church administration and doctrine.

These were significant exceptions since it meant that what mattered most immediately to most people remained in Scottish hands. The lawyers became pivotal figures. On behalf of their patrons, such as notably Ilay whom we have already met , they effectively ran Scotland. Legal independence also reflected an intellectual difference. Smith's own law lectures follow, albeit distinctively, the Roman Natural Law curriculum. It was that succession that had particular political consequences in Scotland.

The members of the Scottish Enlightenment were Hanoverians. This meant more than supporting the current system because that very support signified their opposition to Jacobitism. The Jacobites were the supporters of the Stuart line and in the first half of the eighteenth century there were regular flare-ups against the new dynasty. The regularity of these flare-ups suggests that the Hanoverian succession was far from bedded-down though disquiet with the effects of the Union is not conterminous with support for the Jacobite cause.

The initial military success of the Jacobites was not matched by popular support from the bulk of the Scottish people and was soon reversed. After the battle of Culloden , which crushed the rebellion, it was deliberate Government policy to destroy the political separateness of the Highlands Youngson : One of the motives behind the Union was the need for Scots to gain unrestricted access to English markets.

Eventually, by about mid-century, the Union began to have an economic pay-off and rapid change took place Devine The growth of Glasgow was the most remarkable of these changes. Its population grew from roughly 17, when Smith was a student to over 42, in Hamilton : The city attracted numbers from the rural Western Highlands as a process of urbanization began.

Excluding agriculture, the production of textiles, especially linen, was the chief Scottish industry Durie In Glasgow the crucial development was the growth in the tobacco trade as it overtook Bristol to become the major port. What urbanization and textile production did require was a supportive infrastructure both physical and financial.

Transportation was by horse Smith rode to Oxford and boat. While there was a reasonably efficient coach service between Edinburgh and London, cross-country travel was arduous. The only way to transport in bulk was by boat and to get from Glasgow to Edinburgh about 45 miles apart meant a long and hazardous voyage via the Pentland Firth well over miles. A canal linking the estuaries of the rivers Forth in the east and the Clyde in the west was started in and completed in This was a considerable engineering achievement but clearly took extensive capital funding.

The concomitant of this capital investment was the development of a banking system. There were a host of smaller banks, not all of them viable.

One of the problems faced by the shareholders in the Forth-Clyde Canal was the depression in confidence caused by the crash of the Ayr Bank in This was not mere lip-service. In a year-old student Thomas Aikenhead was executed for blasphemy. This confessional commitment lasted into the eighteenth century with attempts to remove for heresy the Professor of Divinity at Glasgow, John Simson father of Robert in and again in Library Card Please enter your library card number.

Contents Go to page:. View: no detail some detail full detail. Dear Mr Smith. End Matter Bibliography Index. All rights reserved. He attended the Burgh School, where he studied Latin, mathematics, history and writing. Smith entered the University of Glasgow when he was 14 and in went to Oxford. After toiling for nine years, in , Smith published An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations usually shortened to The Wealth of Nations , which is thought of as the first work dedicated to the study of political economy.

He also explored theories of the division of labor, an idea dating back to Plato , through which specialization would lead to a qualitative increase in productivity. In time, The Wealth of Nations won Smith a far-reaching reputation, and the work, considered a foundational work of classical economics, is one of the most influential books ever written. In , Smith began giving a series of public lectures at the University of Edinburgh. Through these lectures, in he met and became lifelong friends with Scottish philosopher and economist David Hume.

It remains one of the chief justifications for free-market ideologies. The invisible hand theorem at least in its modern interpretations suggests that the means of production and distribution should be privately owned and that if trade occurs unfettered by regulation, in turn, society will flourish organically. These arguments are naturally competitive with the concept and function of government. The government is not serendipitous—it is prescriptive and intentional. Politicians, regulators, and those who exercise legal force such as the courts, police, and military pursue defined goals through coercion.

However, in contrast, macroeconomic forces—supply and demand, buying and selling, profit and loss occur voluntarily until government policy inhibits or overrides them. In this sense, it is more accurate to suggest that government affects the invisible hand, not the other way around.

However, it is the absence of market mechanisms that frustrates government planning. Some economists refer to this as the economic calculation problem. When people and businesses individually make decisions based on their willingness to pay money for a good or service, that information is captured dynamically in the price mechanism. This, in turn, allocates resources automatically toward the most valued ends. When governments interfere with this process, unwanted shortages and surpluses tend to occur.

Consider the massive gas shortages in the United States during the s. The Nixon and Ford administrations responded by introducing price controls to limit the cost of gasoline to American consumers. The goal was to make cheap gas available to the public.

Instead, gas stations had no incentive to stay open for more than a few hours. Oil companies had no incentive to increase production domestically. Consumers had every incentive to buy more gasoline than they needed. Large-scale shortages and gas lines resulted. Those gas lines disappeared almost immediately after controls were eliminated and prices were allowed to rise. While it is tempting to say the invisible hand limits government, that wouldn't necessarily be correct.

Rather, the forces that guide voluntary economic activity toward large societal benefit are the same forces that limit the effectiveness of government intervention. Boiling the principles Smith expressed regarding the invisible hand and other concepts down to essentials, Smith believed a nation needed the following three elements to bring about universal prosperity.

Smith wanted people to practice thrift , hard work, and enlightened self-interest. He thought the practice of enlightened self-interest was natural for the majority of people. In his famous example, a butcher does not supply meat based on good-hearted intentions, but because he profits by selling meat. If the meat he sells is poor, he will not have repeat customers and, thus, no profit. Therefore, it's in the butcher's interest to sell good meat at a price that customers are willing to pay, so that both parties benefit in every transaction.

Smith believed the ability to think long-term would curb most businesses from abusing customers. When that wasn't enough, he looked to the government to enforce laws.

Extending upon self-interest in trade, Smith saw thrift and savings as important virtues, especially when savings were used to invest. Through investment, the industry would have the capital to buy more labor-saving machinery and encourage innovation. This technological leap forward would increase returns on invested capital and raise the overall standard of living.