Adam Smith Quotes on Knowledge
Adam Smith's posthumously published History of Astronomy (1795) gives the most systematic statement of his philosophical theory of scientific knowledge: the human mind has a constitutional aversion to surprise and a corresponding pleasure in the imaginative connection of phenomena that initially appeared discontinuous, and the successive scientific systems are best understood as imaginative machines that progressively widen the range of phenomena their principles can connect. The framework supplies the epistemological background to the better-known moral and economic works: the Theory of Moral Sentiments treats sympathy as the imaginative bridge by which we enter the situation of others, and the Wealth of Nations describes the unintended cognitive economy of the division of labor.
Quotes
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Attributed to Adam Smith:
“Science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition.”
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“To desire you to read my book over and mark all the corrections you would wish me to make...would oblige me greatly: I know how much I shall be benefitted and I shall at the same time preserve the pretious right of private judgement for the sake of which our forefathers kicked out the Pope and the Pretender. I believe you to be much more infalliable than the Pope, but as I am a Protestant my conscience makes me scruple to submit to any unscriptural authority.”
Letter to William Strahan (4 April 1760), quoted in Adam Smith, The Correspondence of Adam Smith , eds. E. C. Mossner and I. S. Ross (1987), pp. 67–68 -
“To desire you to read my book over and mark all the corrections you would wish me to make...would oblige me greatly: I know how much I shall be benefitted and I shall at the same time preserve the pretious right of private judgement for the sake of which our forefathers kicked out the Pope and the Pretender. I believe you to be much more infalliable than the Pope, but as I am a Protestant my consc”
Letter to William Strahan (4 April 1760), quoted in Adam Smith, The Correspondence of Adam Smith , eds. E. C. Mossner and I. S. Ross (1987), pp. 67–68 -
“I perfectly agree with your Lordship too, that to crush the Industry of so great and so fine a province of the empire, in order to favour the monopoly of some particular towns in Scotland or England, is equally unjust and impolitic. The general opulence and improvement of Ireland might certainly, under proper management, afford much greater resources to the Government, than can ever be drawn from ”
Letter to Henry Dundas (1 November 1779), quoted in Adam Smith, The Correspondence of Adam Smith , eds. E. C. Mossner and I. S. Ross (1987), p. 241 -
“Section I, Chap. III.”
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.