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Adam Smith's Methodology

Imagination, Rhetoric, and Rene Descartes

By: Jorge López Lloret

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eText | 31 July 2026 | Edition Number 1

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Most previous studies of Adam Smith'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: Smith's own didactic rhetoric and the methodological writings of Rene 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 Newton'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 Smith's thinking prior to the publication of The Theory of Moral Sentiments. Consequently, any methodological examination of Smith'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 Smith's life and work.