This may not be the final answer, but here are some relevant comments from Max Lerner's (1937) excellent "Introduction" to WN:
"A new society, emerging from the shell of the old, creates a framework within which a great thinker or artist is enabled to do his work; and that work, in turn, serves to smash finally the shell of the old society, and to complete and make firmer the outlines of the new. Thus it has been with Machiavelli's Prince, with Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations, with Karl Marx's Capital."

Answering the criticism about Smith's lack of originality, in the next paragraph:
"No first-rate mind whose ideas sum up an age and influence masses and movements to come is in any purist sense original. The Wealth of Nations is undoubtedly the foundation-work of modern economic thought."

I can't resist sending this. Answering the criticism that Smith was an apologist for capitalism and no more, Lerner says:
"All that concerns us is to see the curious paradox of Smith's position in history; to have fashioned his system of thought in order to blast away the institutional obstructions from the past, and bring a greater degree of economic freedom and therefore a greater total wealth for all the people in a nation; and yet to have had his doctrine result in the glorification of economic irresponsibility and the entrenchment of the middle class in power. A reading of Adam Smith's work and a study of its place in the history of ideas should be one of the best solvents for smugness and intellectual absolutism."

Best,

Sumitra Shah
________________________________________


Dear Listers,

J Schumpeter’s *History of Economic Analysis*, M Blaug’s *Retrospect*, and M Rothbard’s *An Austrian Perspective
on HET* report that Adam Smith has been incorretly thought to have created the science of economics and known as
the “Founding Father.”

I have been wondering: who thought so? These books do not provide any references. I did a quick search on Google
but had no reliable results. Does anybody know when and who exactly coined or used the term “founding father”
and thought Adam Smith created the science of economics?

Regards,

Altug Yalcintas
Ankara University