Samford University Honors Program, Spring 2005
Tuesdays & Thursday, 8-9:50 AM, Robinson Hall # 227 (Florida Room)
Professors Mike DeBow & Ken Roxburgh

Last updated May 16, 2008.
 

Adam Smith

Alan Greenspan's Adam Smith Memorial Lecture  (Feb. 6, 2005, Kirkcaldy, Scotland)
Brief biography of Smith  (Library of Economics & Liberty)
David Frum, Adam Smith, the sensible philosopher  (The New Criterion, 1996)

Bernard Mandeville, The Grumbling Hive: or, Knaves Turn'd Honest (1705).
    (This poem formed the basis for his later work, The Fable of the Bees, or Private Vices, Publick Benefits (1714), available online at the Online Library of Liberty and the Washington University website.)  The History of Economic Thought site offers a profile of Mandeville and a few links.

Frances Hutcheson, Remarks upon The Fable of the Bees (1726?).

Joseph Butler's sermons "on human nature" are the first three of his Fifteen Sermons (1729).
    (For more on Butler, see the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy and Butler on the Web.)

The Wealth of Nations is available online, at
            the Adam Smith Institute
            the Library of Economics & Liberty
            the U. of Adelaide
           ReadPrint.com

The Theory of Moral Sentiments is available online, at
            the Adam Smith Institute
            the Library of Economics & Liberty

Samuel Fleischacker, Economics and the Ordinary Person: Re-reading Adam Smith (Library of Economics & Liberty, 2004)

There is a large archive of Smith's writing on the Online Library of Liberty
Also recommended: the large Smith links page on the History of Economic Thought website.
The websites of the Adam Smith Institute and the Adam Society Society are well worth a visit.

In the last (long!) paragraph of Book I, chapter 1 of the Wealth of Nations, Smith marvels that "the number of people" involved in producing the goods and services consumed by "the most common . . . day-laborer in a civilized and thriving country . . . exceeds all calculation."  For a light, easy-to-read essay that illustrates this same point about the ability of markets to coordinate the activities of strangers, see Leonard Reed's famous 1958 essay, "I, Pencil."

Friedrich Hayek, The Use of Knowledge in Society, American Economic Review (1945)

Peter Minowitz, Adam Smith's Invisible Hands, Economics Journal Watch (2004) (PDF file)

Eamonn Butler, Adam Smith -- a Primer (2007) (PDF file)

Alan Macfarlane, Adam Smith and the Making of the Modern World (2000) (PDF file)
    from Macfarlane's 2000 book, The Riddle of the Modern World

Smithian bloggers:  Proportional Belief, Adam Smith Lives!, and Adam Smith's Lost Legacy.  The last blog is the work of
Gavin Kennedy, whose Adam Smith's Lost Legacy (2005) is the subject of this website.
 

The Scots and the American Founding

The Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution, the Federalist Papers, and other documents related to the founding are available on many scholarly websites, including
        the Avalon Project at the Yale Law School
        the Emory Law Library website
        the U. of Oklahoma Law Library website
        the National Archives website
        the TeachingAmericanHistory.org website
        the National Constitution Center (the "Interactive Constitution")

Short biographical sketches of John Witherspoon from Princeton U. here and here; a history website
Roger Kimball's essay on Witherspoon (2006), based on Jeffrey Morrison's 2005 book, John Witherspoon and the Founding of the American Republic (2005).  (More reviews, here and here.)
Arthur Herman lecture on Witherspoon (2003)
Joseph Loconte, Minister to Freedom, The Legacy of John Witherspoon (2001).  A longer version is here (in PDF).
A truncated version of John Witherspoon's sermon, The Dominion of Providence Over the Passions of Men (1776)
The Works of the Rev. John Witherspoon, by Gordon Tait (2003)

David Hume's essay, That Politics May Be Reduced to a Science (1742).  Shorter version here.

John Shook's remarkably good Timeline of American Thought includes lots of links to relevant materials on the colonial era and the early republic.

The website of the James Madison Center, at James Madison U., contains a useful archive.  The Library of Congress has an extensive collection of the James Madison Papers.

There are two excellent reference sites for students of the Constitution:
        the 5-volume The Founders' Constitution, courtesy of the U. of Chicago Press,
        and The Founders' Alamanac, courtesy of the Heritage Foundation.
 

General resources

Alexander Broadie, Scottish Philosophy in the 18th Century (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2001)

Gertrude Himmelfarb's speech, Three Paths to Modernity: The British, American and French Enlightenments (AEI, 2004)

John Robertson, The Scottish Contribution to the Enlightenment (1997)

Large links page on the Scottish Enlightenment on the History of Economic Thought website.

The full text of James McCosh's 1875 book, The Scottish Philosophy, is available on the McMaster website.

The website of the BBC program, In Search of Scotland, is worth a look, as is the page devoted to the "Britannia Incorporated" episode of Simon Schama's History of Britain.  ScottishHistory.com looks interesting, but I can't tell who the editors are.  Large Scottish links pages include Scotland's Culture,  Electric Scotland and Rampant Scotland.

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy includes entires on David Hume and Thomas Reid.  The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy is maintained by a Hume scholar, so its entries on him are extensive. Click here for an extensive Hume links page, and here for the Hume Society.  The website of the Center for the Study of Scottish Philosophy at the Princeton Theological Seminary focuses primarily on Thomas Reid.

The Online Library of Liberty includes works by and about Carmichael, Fordyce, Hume, Hutcheson, and Robertson.

You can watch or listen to lectures given in 2002 and 2006 on the Scottish Enlightenment at the U. of Edinburgh.

Scottish blogs:  Arthur's Seat superseded by The Select Society
 

On the "Scots-Irish" in America

Born Fighting: How the Scots Irish Shaped America, by former secretary of the Navy James Webb, is currently selling very well.  There's a favorable review of the book, from the Voice of America, here.  Similar themes are explored in greater depth in Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America (1989), by noted historian David Hackett Fischer. For a map showing Scotch-Irish descendants as a percentage of the population, by county, as of the 1990 census, click here.  For Scottish ancestry, click here.

Make plans now to celebrate National Tartan Day next April 6.