Jim Writes:  <<I think it makes sense if one thinks of "modern" as shorthand
for "in the Enlightenment tradition of scientific inquiry.">>

It is possible we agree here.  I do not see anything fundamentally new in
the 18th century scientific viewpoint, and its opposition to religious
mysticism and dogmatism.  I would argue that, as far as we can tell,
Voltaire’s manifesto in 1750 looked quite a lot like that of Democritus in
400 BC.  But certainly there was a sociological change in the late 18th
century, in that a lot of people took up these enlightenment ideas
enthusiastically.  It does make sense to locate Smith within this epoch, and
say that in some sense he was in the right place at the right time.  But I
still strongly maintain it is a damagingly misleading myth to falsely credit
him with original insights concerning invisible hands etc 

Anthony gives a remarkably apposite quote from Pryne.  And Pryne is surely
correct on some matters, most notably , the extensive use of machinery in
diminishing manual labour.  But we know many things today Pryne did not know
200 years ago.  Of course, Pryne did not know that a 20th century US
government would restrict private gold ownership to better roll out its fiat
currency.  But he did not know that Wang Mang had done exactly the same
thing in the 1st century AD either.  He thinks of bills of exchange as a
modern invention, yet if Denise Schmandt-Besserat is correct, the earliest
forebears of such items were in use before writing, 7,000 years earlier. 
Following Popper, many would criticise Bacon’s ‘method of reasoning’ today.
 In some ways Democritus was arguably a more sophisticated philosopher of
science than Bacon. Etc etc.

Pryne gives a wonderful list of powerful ideas, but from today’s
perspective, I think we can see many of them were also quite close to myths.

Rob Tye