Where Did The Wealth of Nations Come From?
September 30, 2006 Where Did The Wealth of Nations Come From? Adam Smith (1723-1790) published The Wealth of Nations in 1776, also the year of the American Revolution. Both the Wealth of Nations and the Declaration of Independence sprang from a context, the so-called “Enlightenment.” The Enlightenment in turn has a history, traced in the lectures of Alan Charles Kors, on “The Birth of the Modern Mind: The Intellectual History of the 17th and 18th Centuries,” available from The Teaching Company (www.teach12.com). The story begins in the early 17th century with politician and philosopher Sir Francis Bacon, (1561-1626). Born to a noble family, Bacon rose in the court of Queen Elizabeth and then James I, eventually becoming Lord Chancellor–before being dismissed for taking bribes. Bacon was educated in the mode of thinking that dominated European schools and universities: “Aristotelian scholasticism,” a blend of Greek philosophy and Christian theology. Under scholasticism, knowledge deriv
