Smith's Solution Research Articles

Les 'Lettres sur la sympathie' (1798) de Sophie de Grouchy: philosophie morale et reforme sociale

Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments was given three French translations in the eighteenth century. The third, published in 1798 and based on the substantially revised sixth edition that Smith completed in 1789, was the work of Sophie de Grouchy, the widow of the mathematician and republican political theorist Jean-Antoine-Nicolas de Caritat, Marquis de Condorcet. The translation was accompanied by eight letters on the subject of sympathy by de Grouchy herself that were addressed to a certain C***, who might have been Condorcet, although he had been executed in 1793, but who might also have been the medical philosopher Pierre-Jean-Georges Cabanis, both because he was a close acquaintance (he was married to Sophie de Grouchy's sister) and because he was to take up several of the concerns of the Lettres sur la sympathie in his own Rapports du physique au moral de l'homme of 1802. Both works addressed the problem of explaining how some sentiments could also be moral sentiments, as, intriguingly, the title of Smith's book appeared to announce. Both works also went on to present parallel critical assessments of what they took to be Smith's solution to the problem. The content and direction of these assessments form the basis of this new, skilfully annotated edition of the Lettres produced by Marc André Bernier and Deidre Dawson. It has been complemented by six illuminating essays, by Elisabeth Badinter, Catriona Seth, Daniel Dumouchel, Michel Malherbe, and the two editors themselves, dealing both with Grouchy's Lettres and the broader subject of the French reception of Smith's moral theory. As Badinter and Seth note in their contributions, it is likely that Grouchy's translation and commentary were intended originally to complement the never published (and possibly never written) commentary by her husband on the translation of Smith's Wealth of Nations published in 1790 by the poet Jean-Antoine Roucher. Grouchy's assessment of Smith's moral theory was therefore designed to parallel Condorcet's assessment of Smith's political economy. As the well-researched essays by the other contributors help to show, one of the implications of this parallel is that Grouchy's text amounts to a helpful guide not only to the similarities and differences between her own and Smith's moral theories, but also between Smith's and Condorcet's versions of political economy. Most of the emphasis in recent scholarship has tended to highlight the similarities. With this timely edition, it will be easier to identify some of the differences, particularly in the light of Smith's treatment of the idea of an impartial spectator and of the imaginative capabilities that this idea presupposed. This, in turn, will help with the still unfinished task of finding out more about the content and shape of European moral and political thought after Rousseau.

O mercado como ordem social em Adam Smith, Walras e Hayek

O objetivo do artigo é apresentar criticamente as teorias do mercado de Adam Smith, Leon Walras e F. A. Hayek, sublinhando o que se considera terem em comum, ou seja, a ideia de mercado como expressão da ordem social capitalista. Entende-se que esta concepção do mercado como ordem social aparece originariamente na história do pensamento econômico e na história das ideias através da solução de Adam Smith frente aos filósofos do contrato e avança, analiticamente, um século após, na tentativa de demonstração lógico-matemática da Teoria do Equilíbrio Geral em Walras para adquirir a souplesse teórica necessária a sua sobrevivência, no século XX, na teoria de Hayek, em que a história realizaria o autodesenvolvimento da ordem do mercado. O texto percorre as filiações filosóficas e as implicações metodológicas das teorias do mercado desses grandes autores, mostrando as formas diferenciadas que elas assumem: ordem natural para Smith, ordem racional para Walras e ordem espontânea para Hayek.

Downslope Windstorms. Part I: Effect of Air Density Decrease with Height

Abstract In 1985 Smith published a solution of a nonlinear, steady-state, two-dimensional, mesoscale problem concerning airflow crossing a mountain ridge. He used his solution to explain the mechanism of severe downslope winds. In particular, Smith considered the 11 January 1972 windstorm in Boulder, when an undisturbed flow approaching the ridge embraced almost the entire thickness of the troposphere. It is known that in this case the continuity equation should allow for the fact that air density decreases with height. In the present paper we generalize Smith's solution by retaining a term in the continuity equation, which in the first approximation takes into account the decrease of air density with height. The solution obtained is analyzed in detail and compared with Smith's solution. The error of solution due to neglect of the aforementioned factor is evaluated. Some physical conclusions are drawn.

Another Look at Downslope Winds. Part II: Nonlinear Amplification beneath Wave-Overturning Layers

Abstract Numerical mountain wave simulations have documented that intense lee-slope winds frequently arise when wave-overturning occurs above the mountain. Explanations for this amplification process have been proposed by Clark and Peltier in terms of a resonance produced by linear-wave reflections from a self-induced critical layer, and by Smith in terms of solutions to Long's equation for flow beneath a stagnant well-mixed layer. In this paper, we evaluate the predictions of these theories through numerical mountain-wave simulations in which the level of wave-overturning is fixed by a critical layer in the mean flow. The response of the simulated flow to changes in the critical-layer height and the mountain height is in good agreement with Smith's theory. A comparison of Smith's solution with shallow-water theory suggests that the strong lee-slope winds associated with wave-overturning are caused by a continuously stratified analog to the transition from subcritical to supercritical flow in conventional...

Stress intensity factor for a corner flaw

Applying Smith's solution for a semi-circular flaw, an approximate expression is derived for a corner flaw emanating from an edge of a quarter infinite solid. The maximum stress intensity factor on the periphery of the flaw is found to be K = σ√2 a. The same expression can be obtained if an alternative approach, based on Sneedon's solution for a penny shaped crack, is used. Superimpose with Kobayashi's back surface magnification factor and Bowie's circular hole influence factor, the stress intensity factor expression is checked out with available test data. The correlation between the analysis and the test data was within an accuracy of 4 per cent.

The Evaluation of a Selection Index

The coefficients in both linear functions (aj and cj) are known constants. Smith's solution is in terms of the population parameters of gq and ej, which in practice must be estimated from sample data. For more than two variates, these estimates are laborious to calculate and in small samples possess very complicated statistical properties. It has been shown by Williams [1961, 1962] that, for the assumption of normal additive vectors gi = {gqj} and ej = {eii}, some of the estimated weights have finite variances only if the number of classes used to estimate the covariances of the qij exceeds by five or more the number of variates included in the index, and that failure to correct the index weights for a bias factor can result in a negative correlation of the index with true worth. These difficulties prompt the following questions. Has the selection index constructed with sample estimates of the population parameters been proven reliable enough to merit its use? Would an index, such as a linear combination of the observable variates using the known weights of the nonobservable linear functions, be