IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/scotjp/v41y1994i4p394-415.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Reciprocating Monads: Individuals, The Wealth of Nations, and the Dream of Economic Science

Author

Listed:
  • Urquhart, Robert

Abstract

The Wealth of Nations is a pivotal point for understanding the place of the individual in economic theory. Individuals in The Wealt of Nations are reciprocating monads, engaged in necessary relations with others but only for their own self-interest. Looking back to The Theory of Moral Sentiments we can see that Smith was forced to this formulation by the new requirements of economic science. Looking forward, we see the exigencies of economic science, especially in neoclassical economics, force the individual to become entirely a monad. This raises the question as to whether the demands of science are conducive to an economic theory adequate to its subject matter. Copyright 1994 by Scottish Economic Society.

Suggested Citation

  • Urquhart, Robert, 1994. "Reciprocating Monads: Individuals, The Wealth of Nations, and the Dream of Economic Science," Scottish Journal of Political Economy, Scottish Economic Society, vol. 41(4), pages 394-415, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:scotjp:v:41:y:1994:i:4:p:394-415
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:scotjp:v:41:y:1994:i:4:p:394-415. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/sesssea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.