Economic science, like most social sciences, builds upon the works of previous generations. In order to leave time for new research and discovery, the accumulated wisdom of past generations is taught to new generations through summaries in textbooks and lectures.
This logical progression of economic science makes sense if the ideas and importance of past discoveries can be easily (and properly) conveyed by individuals unfamiliar with the original texts. For example, few physicists need to read the work of Newton to understand his discoveries and their importance to an understanding of how the world works today.
To some extent, the same may not be true about economics. While some ideas, such as a consumption function might be easily conveyed without reading the original texts, the same may not be true of all economic insights. The distillation of a lifetime of work into a few paragraphs may not only fail to properly convey the important nature of an author?s work, but the distillation process might, over time, distort the message so much that it an economists work is frequently interpreted to mean something very different from what was originally intended.
University of Richmond economist Jonathan B. Wight clearly believes this to be the case with Adam Smith. Since few economists today read THE WEALTH OF NATIONS, let alone the book Smith thought was his best THE THEORY OF MORAL SENTIMENTS, their knowledge of his work is often limited to ?the invisible hand.?
The invisible hand is frequently taken to mean that selfishness is enough to make markets work. As Wight demonstrates in the book, Smith?s true insight was that ?selfishness is simply not enough? to make markets work.
Wight has undertaken an important task with this book. Not only is it good fiction (at least to a graduate student in economics), it is good economics and good pedagogy. SAVING ADAM SMITH will do more for economics than 90 percent of the articles in the AMERICAN ECONOMIC REVIEW.
