ECIPE Webinar: The Enduring Legacy of Adam Smith – Why does Smith Remain a Key Thinker?
Please join us for an online conversation with Matt Ridley and Russ Robert!
This year marks the 300th anniversary of Adam Smith, the Scottish thinker who helped shaping much of the “modern” thinking about the liberal society and economy – about man, her moral, and relations to others. Of course, Smith is most famous for The Wealth of Nations and his piercing analysis of mercantilism – a book that, famously, expanded on the insights about economic specialisation and laid out the core framework of the division of labour. At a time when mercantilism is resurfacing alongside technological anxiety, the economics of Adam Smith should yet again be central territory in reflections on economic policy.
But Smith’s legacy extends beyond economics and includes models of man and society. As a classic Enlightenment thinker, Smith approached the general – not just the particular – and included jurisprudence, physics, biology, theology, and spirituality in his work. What is Smith’s core model of man and society? Why is it relevant today? What should people, companies and governments especially take away from the world of Adam Smith?
Programme
Matt Ridley is an award-winning zoologist who has authoured several books about the evolution of species, the genome, virtue, technology, innovation, progress, the economy – of everything. A former Science Editor for the Economist magazine, Dr. Ridley has a wide readership and audience around the world – and his Ted talk about specialisation and cooperation (When Ideas have Sex) has been matched by millions. His latest books include The Rational Optimist and Viral: The Search for the Origin of Covid 19.
Russ Roberts is a fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution and the President of Shalem College in Jerusalem. A leading economist with a doctorate from the University of Chicago, Dr. Roberts is the host of one of the oldest and biggest podcasts – EconTalk: Conversations for the Curious – which he started in 2006. He has authored several books and released ten years ago How Adam Smith can Change your Life: An Unexpected Guide to Human Nature and Happiness, one of the best books ever on the philosophies of Adam Smith. His latest book is Wild Problems: A Guide to Decisions that Define us.
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