| book details |

Adam Smith’s Methodology: Imagination, Rhetoric, and Rene Descartes

By (author) Jorge LÃ³pez Lloret

| on special |

normal price: R 6 722.95

Price: R 6 050.95

| add to trolley |

| book description |

Most previous studies of Adam Smithâ€™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: Smithâ€™s own didactic rhetoric and the methodological writings of RenÃ© 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 Newtonâ€™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, Descartes. As such, Descartes and rhetoric were central to the young Smithâ€™s thinking prior to the publication of The Theory of Moral Sentiments. Consequently, any methodological examination of Smithâ€™s published works must be framed as a question of didactic exposition seen through a Cartesian lens. This book will appeal particularly to historians of philosophy and economic theory, as well as to scholars of Adam Smithâ€™s life and work.