Adam Smith (1723 - 1790) is frequently considered the founding father of the discipline or science of economics, though he began as a philosopher. He was elected to the Chair of Logic in Glasgow Univesity in 1751, becoming the Chair of Moral Philosophy in 1952. He lectured on natural theology, ethics, jurisprudence and 'expediency' (or economics), in that order. His lectures on ethics were eventually to be published as The Theory of Moral Sentiments, (1759), while those on expediency - or economics - became An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of theWealth of Nations (1776).

The Wealth of Nations (first published in 1776, the year of American Independence), coincided with the death of feudal Europe and the birth of the industrial age, and provided a rationale for the associated revolution of economic (and social) order with which we still live. He was known, first, as a moral philosopher, and later and more widely as a political economist (a tribe or species which is now seriously endangered, if not actually extinct).

Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759) is largely a theory of sympathy, from which he derives a trinity of principles which govern virtue and virtuous behaviour: Propriety - proper government and direction of all our affections; Prudence - judicious pursuit of our own private interest; Benevolence - the exercise of only those affections which aim at the happiness of others. In the Wealth of Nations, Smith spells out the market theory of the invisible hand, and brought his contemporaries and their descendents (including us) to see and appreciate the modern economic system for the first time, overthrowing the previous ideologies and practices of mercantalism and feudalism. Despite omissions and over-simplifications, this work remains a model of both observation and systematisation in the social sciences. However, it does not obviously include much of his thinking about sympathy. Just possibly this was because his great work preceded Charles Darwin's Origin of Species (1859) by exactly 100 years, and Max Weber (1864 - 1920), a founding father of sociology, by 200 years.

See, as a classic and brief account of Adam Smith, his life and work: The Wonderful World of Adam Smith, chapter 2, The Worldly Philosophers, Robert Heilbroner, Pelican, 1983.

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