PANEL 70    Adam Smith

Perhaps the most influential thinker of the Scottish Enlightenment, Adam Smith was born in Kirkcaldy in 1723. The old harbour fascinated him as he watched ships load and unload at the quaysides. Having studied at Glasgow University and Oxford, he lectured at Edinburgh before being appointed Professor of Moral Philosophy at Glasgow. He is rightly renowned for two enormously influential pieces of scholarship. The Theory of Moral Sentiments was published in 1759 but the work he is most famous for is An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. It is considered the first modern treatment of economics and it has been enormously influential since its publication in 1776. Many scholars see Smith’s dictum of the play of self-interest in economic life as being summarised in this famous sentence:

 

It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages.

As with many great thinkers, Smith has been interpreted by politicians of many different persuasions but his clear-eyed thinking makes his work highly accessible almost 250 years after The Wealth of Nations was first published.

 

Panel stitched by:

Louise Foster

Meg Murray

Christine Simm

Jean Taylor

Fiona Wemyss

Fiona Wilkie

Stitched in:

Forgandenny, Edinburgh