Adam Smith's 'History of Astronomy' and view of science

Abstract

This paper aims to clarify Adam Smith's view of science that has been found in his capacity as a historian or philosopher of science. It is shown that Smith assesses scientific activities as seeking to uncover underlying or hidden causal mechanisms at the real level that link together patterns and regularities at the empirical level of the world. He deals largely with such dimensions of science in his essays on natural sciences--particularly in his 'History of Astronomy'. Importantly, Smith applied a version of inference to the best explanation to evaluate possible competing hypotheses for the progress of scientific knowledge. This, and some related concepts help us to view Smith, who comes closer to a critical realist perspective as a modern version of scientific realism, in which a realist ontology is coupled to a form of epistemological dualism (a robust relativist epistemology). Copyright The Author 2012. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Cambridge Political Economy Society. All rights reserved., Oxford University Press.