Galileo, Smith and the paradox of value: the 'connection' of art and science

Galileo Galilei encountered and resolved the paradox of exchange value in a key methodological passage in his famous book on astronomy. Although his brush with this idea could not be termed ‘theoretical’ or ‘economic’ in any conventional sense, he understood that real price changes were related to scarcity. This astonishing point has been hitherto unrecognized. We further argue that Adam Smith was influenced by Galileo on scientific method as revealed in Smith’s History of Astronomy. Smith read and digested Galileo’s famous works directly and through his careful study of his most important influence, Isaac Newton. We conjecture that Smith’s failure to solve the paradox in the Wealth of Nations and to seek a measurement of constant change was, at least derivatively, an attempt to follow Galileo methodological lead. We raise the possibility that Smith connected social and physical science in the quest to measure the ever-changing wealth of nations.