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The ‘Invisible Hand’ Phenomenon in Economics

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Propriety and Prosperity

Part of the book series: Archival Insights into the Evolution of Economics ((AIEE))

Abstract

This chapter discusses Adam Smith’s rhetorical use of the ‘invisible hand’ in the context of his teachings on metaphors as figures of speech in his lectures on Rhetoric (Edinburgh, 1748–51; Glasgow, 1751–63 (LRBL). After Smith died (1790), a strikingly long period of silence about his three references to an ‘invisible hand’ followed until 1875, when traces emerged of a Cambridge University oral tradition of debate about laissez-faire and the ‘invisible hand’ that were closer to its modern, ‘selfish’ versions than those used by Adam Smith. That oral tradition eventually leached into print (Pigou, 1929; Gray, 1931). Paul Samuelson (1948) transmuted Smith’s ‘self-interest’ into ‘selfishness,’ which flooded across the discipline from the 1960s.

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  1. Edinburgh Business School, Heriot-Watt University, UK

    Gavin Kennedy (Emeritus Professor)

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  1. The University of British Columbia, Canada

    David F. Hardwick (Special Advisor for Planning in The Faculty of Medicine and Professor Emeritus, Pathology and Pediatrics) & Leslie Marsh (Senior Research Associate, Faculty of Medicine) (Special Advisor for Planning in The Faculty of Medicine and Professor Emeritus, Pathology and Pediatrics) &  (Senior Research Associate, Faculty of Medicine)

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© 2014 Gavin Kennedy

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Kennedy, G. (2014). The ‘Invisible Hand’ Phenomenon in Economics. In: Hardwick, D.F., Marsh, L. (eds) Propriety and Prosperity. Archival Insights into the Evolution of Economics. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137321053_11

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