Copernican Revolutions Revisited in Adam Smith by way of David Hume

Abstract

This paper revisits Adam Smith’s treatment of Copernicanism and Newtonianism in his essay “The History of Astronomy”. I will provide a detailed analysis of all the comments that Smith makes on the Hume’s oeuvre, noting their concordances and differences. The latter due to two conflicting commitments: i) Hume is committed to the “true philosophy” –a certain kind of scepticism which Smith does not share; ii) Hume never seems to have assimilated the way Newton changed the evidential standards within science.