Andrew Wilkins (GWF Postdoctoral Scholar in History)
Andrew Wilkins is the George Washington Forum’s Postdoctoral Scholar in History. He specializes in British and Irish Economic History, the emergence of social, economic, and political modernity, empire, industrialization, and the Anthropocene. He holds a PhD from the University of Texas at Austin and a BA from the University of Chicago.
Wilkins will analyze why Smith undertook an Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations in Eighteenth Century Scotland. Why did he make, in his words, a “very violent attack…upon the whole commercial system of Great Britain?” Ultimately these concerns were part of a broader attempt to construct a “Science of Man,” a prototypical social science, based upon David Hume’s radical assault upon the whole philosophical system of Europe. To understand those prior questions, Wilkins argues that we must understand that science. This talk seeks to answer the question of what the “Science of Man” was, what was Smith’s goal in constructing it, and how did it relate to the pressing political questions of his day? Only in doing so can not only the Wealth of Nations, but Smith’s wider project, be understood. Moreover, only in doing so can we see how Smith’s context lay at the very core of his work, and what that context means for our readings of Smith today.