WorkAdam Smith

Essays on Philosophical Subjects

Seven papers Smith set apart from the burning he ordered before he died — at the centre of them, the question of why people build systems of the heavens.

by Adam Smith285 passages held

English, the original language, and your language

First published: 1795(published posthumously)
Original language: English

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Overview

In the week before he died on 17 July 1790, Adam Smith had his executors burn sixteen volumes of manuscript he pointed them to; the few papers he judged finished enough to print he kept out of that pile, and seven of them appeared five years later. He had singled one out long before: setting out for London in April 1773, he made David Hume his literary executor and wrote to him what should happen to the papers if he did not come back — of all of them only one was fit to print: an unfinished history of the systems of the heavens that men had believed down to Descartes. It had been in his bedroom bureau since the 1750s; he kept it by him for the rest of his life and never printed a page of it. That fragment is the substantial thing in the volume, and no chronicle of discoveries: it asks why people build systems of the heavens at all, and answers that they do it out of discomfort — an irregular appearance in the sky unsettles the imagination, and a theory settles it again. Ptolemy, Copernicus and Newton each won on that criterion rather than on proof. How far Smith meant this as scepticism about science is still argued over; he also thought Newton's system the greatest discovery anyone had ever made, and said so in the same essay. Joseph Black and James Hutton, the chemist and the geologist who were his literary executors, set the astronomy beside shorter pieces on ancient physics and logic, on the external senses, and on what imitation does in the arts. In front of the whole they put an account of Smith's life by Dugald Stewart, Edinburgh's professor of moral philosophy and Smith's first biographer.

Key concepts

Why does Smith describe a scientific system as a machine?

Because a system, for him, is a contrivance of the imagination rather than a copy of the world: an imaginary machine invented to connect appearances that otherwise arrive unlinked. The chains binding one event to the next are supplied by us, not observed. That is why a system can be judged by how smoothly it runs before anyone asks whether its parts exist.

What is actually in this volume, and who decided what went in?

Joseph Black and James Hutton, Smith's literary executors, assembled it in 1795 from the papers he kept back from the burning. The long history of astronomy is the centrepiece, joined by pieces on ancient physics and ancient logics, on the external senses, and on the imitative arts. Smith published none of it himself, so it is a posthumous volume and never a book he issued.

What are the essays on ancient physics and ancient logics for?

They extend the astronomy's method to two further fields. Rather than assessing whether the ancients were right about matter or universals, Smith asks what unease each system was built to relieve and how the imagination came to rest in it. The history of astronomy is therefore a specimen, not a subject: the same enquiry could be run on any body of received doctrine.

What does the essay on the external senses claim about sight?

That much of what we take ourselves to see, we have learned to see. Distance and solidity are not delivered by the eye, which reports only coloured surface; they are read into it by long association with touch, the sense that meets resistance. Vision is thus an acquired interpretation, which sets up the wider question these papers keep asking: what does perception give, and what do we add?

Themes of the book

What this book returns to, gathered into themes and ordered by how much of the text each one occupies.

Why Systems of the Heavens Get Built

What makes an account of the sky persuasive, if not proof? Smith locates the force in discomfort: an irregular appearance unsettles the imagination, and a theory that settles it again wins.

Kept in a bedroom bureau since the 1750s and never printed in his lifetime, the history of astronomy asks a psychological question rather than a chronological one. Ptolemy, Copernicus and Newton each succeeded by restoring the imagination's ease after wonder and surprise had disturbed it. How far Smith meant that as scepticism about science is still argued over, since he called Newton's system the greatest discovery anyone had made, in the same pages. The reach of the argument goes past the heavens to how any system of thought gets invented and believed.

history of astronomy
scientific explanation
imagination
wonder
philosophy of science
cosmology
planetary motion
heliocentrism
astronomy
history of science
causation
analogy
scientific models
history of philosophy

Enter a dialogue

The Senses and the Arts of Imitation

How does a painting, a piece of music or a dance please by being something it is not? The shorter papers ask what the mind supplies when a copy stands in for its subject.

Black and Hutton set beside the astronomy shorter pieces on the external senses and on what imitation does in the arts, and the two halves share a method: begin from what perception actually delivers, then ask what the mind adds. Each sense is pressed on what it reports before habit and association get to work; the imitative arts are said to please through the visible distance between a copy and its subject, which left instrumental music, imitating nothing, the awkward case. The ancient logics and metaphysics get the same treatment, their doctrines of universals read as further systems for connecting what the mind meets.

aesthetics
perception
music
imitation
representation
vision
sensation
dance
emotion
philosophy of mind
abstraction
universals
classification
external world
painting

Enter a dialogue

Within this work

passages held: 285
distinct concepts: 356
by passages held, corpus-wide: #262

What this book thinks together

The wheel takes this book’s leading concepts and shows how often they come up together. The wider the band between two, the more of its passages speak of both. Among them, most often together: “aesthetics” and “music”.

Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 8 concepts, joined by 17 pairings. 94 pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
Concept	Paired concept	Shared passages
aesthetics	music	27
astronomy	scientific explanation	8
history of science	scientific explanation	8
imagination	scientific explanation	6
astronomy	history of science	5
history of astronomy	scientific explanation	5
history of astronomy	imagination	3
imagination	perception	3
aesthetics	perception	2
astronomy	imagination	2
astronomy	perception	2
music	perception	2
aesthetics	history of astronomy	1
aesthetics	imagination	1
history of science	imagination	1
imagination	music	1
perception	scientific explanation	1

Works held

The author's work in order, this book marked in place. Your-language title first, the original beneath it where the two differ; side chips show which full texts are held.

1759 The Theory of Moral Sentiments
Smith kept returning to this book through the years of The Wealth of Nations, and was still revising it in the year he died. Anyone looking for the moral psychology underneath the economics is looking for this.
EN
1776 The Wealth of Nations
The book that founded political economy as a system, and the one for which Smith is now chiefly remembered — though he set as much store by his moral philosophy.
EN
1795 Essays on Philosophical Subjects you are here EN
1896 Lectures on Justice, Police, Revenue and Arms
Not a work Smith published but a student's notes from his Glasgow course, found and printed in 1896 — the seedbed of the Wealth of Nations and of a theory of justice he never finished.
EN

— or open another of their works