Teachers often say, in an apologetic way, sorry guys. There's so much more to tell you about Adam Smith, but hey, end of class. Maybe they say that because in their back of their heads they can feel the presence of a competitive colleague. A specialist who criticizes that they didn't treat this interesting subject or that interesting subject in Adam Smith. But in this case, I have restricted myself to what Smith tells us in the very first pages of his masterpiece. And of course I know that there is so much more, but I think it's enough to give you an idea of his way of reasoning. And it's also in those pages that you encounter the hard core of ideas that remained very influential in the social sciences in the centuries to come. Here, I want to say just a few words about the question, how can we explain that this Scottish moral philosopher developed those very interesting and important ideas about modern industrial society? Those characteristics of the new socio economic world were still barely visible, but Adam Smith with the eyes of an eagle zoomed in on them and captured them in phrases that were so crystal clear that now everybody could notice them. How did he do it? Well, in sociology we have this tendency to first look at the social context. The economic influences, the intellectual influences, the political situation. And let me just start by saying something that is not very sociological. Adam Smith was a genius period. It doesn't explain much, but this is where we should begin. When you talk about Johann Sebastian Bach who was a contemporary of Montville, or about Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart who was a contemporary of Adam Smith. You should never lose out of sight that the brains of those men are wired in a very, very special way. But it is also important to remember that Smith lived and worked in Scotland under very peaceful circumstances. Not bothered by censors or by bigots who tried to hinder the publication of books or the dissemination of certain ideas. As was the case with many of his contemporary, who suffered from governments that did not allow the freedom of the press. Of course the things he describes had become visible. A good observer could notice the rise of the new manufacturers, the new ways to divide and sub divide labor in more efficient ways. But it certainly helps that Adam Smith himself did not own a pen factory, did not work as a laborer in a pin factory. In fact, he had nothing to do with pens. It's hard to notice a mechanism when you stand too close to it. One has to take a certain distance, be reflexive, compare the phenomenon with other things. Walks so to speak around it, to notice its peculiarities. And for his income, Adam Smith depended on the university, on the governments, sometimes even on the financial support of private persons. But he did not depend on the profits from those manufacturers that he studied. That helped him in becoming the detached analyst who discerned connections that nobody else had theorized before. But there is something else. This famous professor of moral philosophy, who writes about the ideas of great thinkers, such as Voltaire and Rousseau. Takes the reader by the hand and leads him into the work space where ten pin makers are doing their job. He tries to share with his readers his enthusiasm about the clever inventions that make the machines work more efficiently. Inventions that he believes the workers came up with all on their own. He arrives in a very respectful way about the kind of people that were looked down upon in this stratified society where the professor in his vanity doesn't see any resemblance with the common street porter. Just like the authors of the french [FOREIGN], and of course inspired by them, these men who was the advisor of the members of political and economic elite, wants to find out how the process of bin making is exactly organized. What we see here is the melting of two realms of knowledge. One the one hand, the abstract theoretical knowledge, of the professor, the philosopher, the proto-economist, the proto-sociologist. And on the other hand, the every day knowledge of the common people who work in the factories. Their dexterity, their practical insights, their clever inventions. When those two complexes of knowledge are merged, the theories and the pedestrian empirical data, when the separation is lifted between the high class knowledge that is taught in universities and the low class knowledge that the workers and the manufacturers share. Then we see the appearance of a new kind of knowledge. We witness the rise of modern social science.
