Adam Smith is rolling over in his grave!

By Jeb Blackwood

Adam Smith, Scottish moral philosopher and the father of modern economics

Economics is quite possibly the most misunderstood discipline at American colleges and universities.

At the Intercollegiate Studies Institute we talk about the destruction of the humanities, and how our society is quickly losing its culture. While I believe that to be true, I believe something of even greater concern is how the Left has succeeded in the quantification of economics. They have moved it from its rightful home in the humanities to the social sciences.

Beginning in the 1930s, the Left began polluting the philosophically rich soil in which economics was once rooted with lifeless, dehumanizing mathematics.

The thought that economics is rooted in philosophy and not math goes against the established economics theories. Many readers, beyond those who may be familiar with the Austrian school of economics or other conservative areas of economic study, may not have even thought of economics divorced from equations and graphs.  In basic level microeconomics, calculus is a second language.  I am not saying math has no merit in economics at all; even in philosophical logic, mathematical principles are applied.  Yet, even then, economic cannot be simply the study of math as it relates to human behavior. Human behavior does not fit into an equation.

Economics is the study of human interactions in the material world. However, a strong sense of the spiritual is necessary to understand and promote a humane and virtuous economy. To see where economics should be, look at the roots of the discipline. Adam Smith is considered the father of modern economics; but by today’s standards (and the standards of his day, for that matter), we would not consider him an economist. Adam Smith was a moral philosopher, and wrote not about supply and demand with charts and graphs, but about how human nature comes together and works harmoniously in the marketplace.

What makes economics a study in humanities rather than social science?

Economics finds its roots in natural law and the philosophies developed by Plato, Aristotle, Cicero and the Stoics. The thoughts and ideas were then transplanted to the Middle Ages by the Roman Catholic Church, and put into writing at the University of Salamanca in the 1200s. The Left with their “bonfire of the humanities” has successfully removed economics from the line of philosophical succession.

With the quantification of one of the greatest and most comprehensive of academic disciplines, we lose sight of the true nature of humanity, and form it into cookie-cutter science. Doing so damages our idea of virtue in the market place, affecting our transaction with other humans and posing a threat to our understanding of the individual’s place in society.