prior probability

The celebrated Scottish moral economist Adam Smith was a professor at the University of Glasgow (then known as the College of Glasgow, pictured below) from 1751 until early January 1764, when he abruptly left the college in the middle of the 1763-64 academic year to accompany the young 3rd Duke of Buccleuch on his grand tour. Below are some excerpts from Chapter 7 (“Glasgow Enigmas”) of my forthcoming survey of open Adam Smith problems with Salim Rashid (footnotes are below the fold):

Das Freihandelsproblem (the free trade problem). The Act of Union in 1707 not only united Scotland and England into Great Britain; it also lifted oppressive trade restrictions and opened new markets and trading opportunities for Scottish merchants. Glasgow experienced a significant period of prosperity due to its thriving trade with the North American colonies and became a bustling port city, surpassing other British ports like London and Bristol.[1] This prosperity led to the rise of powerful merchants, collectively known as the Tobacco Lords.[2] By 1770, on the eve of the American Revolution, Glasgow was the primary entrepot for Virginian tobacco, much of which was then re-exported to Europe. But did Smith become a free trader during his Glasgow period? Did he ever lecture on the doctrine of free trade, either at the University of Glasgow (1751-1764) or at one of the several private clubs that he was a member of, such as the storied Anderston Club of Glasgow or the Select Society of Edinburgh?[3] Or did Smith first embrace free trade during his extended visit to France (1764-66) or during the time he spent writing and revising The Wealth of Nations (1767-1776)?[4] 

Das Shelburne-Problem. In addition to his regular teaching and administrative duties at the University of Glasgow, why did Adam Smith also agree to take into his home and personally tutor Thomas Fitzmaurice from 1759 to 1761? During this time, Smith corresponded with Fitzmaurice’s older brother, Lord Shelburne, over a dozen times.[5] Considering that Smith was a rather stingy correspondent (he wrote less than 200 of his letters during his entire lifetime!), his correspondence with Lord Shelburne and the responsibility of tutoring his son must have consumed a lot of Smith’s time. Why on Earth did Smith accept this responsibility? Was it to ingratiate himself with Fitzmaurice’s father: John Petty Fitzmaurice, 1st Earl of Shelburne? Was it on account of Lord Shelburne’s wealth and position as a member of the British aristocracy? Did he owe him a favor, perhaps? Also, how many other students, if any, did Smith tutor or take at his home during his Glasgow period, and how much time and effort did this take?

Das Snell-Problem. According to John Rae (1965/1895, pp. 152-153), in June of 1761 the faculty senate of Glasgow University authorized Adam Smith to conduct some business in London on behalf of the university regarding a pending lawsuit involving the Snell Exhibition. In addition, Rae mentions that “on the 15th of October [1761], after his return [from London], he [Smith] reported what he had done [to the faculty senate], and produced a certificate, signed by the Secretary to the Treasury.”[6] Where is that certificate? How long did Smith stay in London, and what other business, if any, did he conduct during this trip? In addition, what was the outcome of this new round of litigation, and why didn’t the previous round of litigation bring the perennial legal controversies surrounding the Snell Exhibition to an end? (In legal speak, why wasn’t the court’s previous decision from the 1740s res judicata?) Are there any additional extant documents (correspondence, receipts, etc.) from Smith’s 1761 trip to London?

Das Hochschulabschluss Problem: Why was Smith awarded an LL.D. degree in October 1762? The University of Glasgow decided to confer on Adam Smith the degree of Doctor of Laws (LL.D.) in October of 1762.[7] Why? In the minutes of the meeting in which the award of Smith’s degree was formally approved, it is reported that Smith’s degree was awarded in recognition of his “universally acknowledged reputation in letters” as well as his success in teaching jurisprudence at the university for many years with “great applause and advantages to the Society.”[8] But given that Smith had already been teaching for over ten years and given that The Theory of Moral Sentiments had been published in 1759, why was the degree not awarded earlier? Also, regardless of the timing of this decision, whose idea was it that Smith should be awarded a degree? Was it Smith himself who asked to be awarded a degree? Or was it the University of Glasgow’s regular policy to award honorary degrees to its own faculty members after, say, 10 years of service or after the publication of an important work?

Today (25 August) is the 81st anniversary of the liberation of Paris from German occupation (see here and here) as well as my first day back in the classroom after the summer break and my 57th birthday!

I will resume my survey of “Adam Smith problems” in the next day or two; in the meantime, check out the hit song “My boo” by Ghostown DJs from the 1990s:

Footnote: for me, “My boo” is the Tom Brady of music: just as the future hall of fame quarterback was selected as the 199th overall pick in the 6th round of the 2000 NFL draft, according to Wikipedia, this all-time classic peaked at number 31 on the Billboard “Hot 100” on its initial release in 1996. 

Below is an excerpt from Chapter 5 (“Das Oxford Problem”) of my forthcoming survey of open Adam Smith problems with Salim Rashid:

“Why did Smith ditch Oxford in 1746? Did this decision have anything to do with John Wesley’s final sermon at Oxford, which he gave two years earlier on 24 August 1744? It was at this sermon that Wesley condemns Oxford University for its failure to live according to the teachings of Scripture, [1] and according to one Smith scholar (our colleague and friend, Ryan Griffiths), ‘Smith would have been expected to be in the audience for the sermon in which Wesley broke from Oxford.’[2] But was the young Adam Smith in attendance when Wesley delivered his last sermon at Oxford on 24 August 1744?[3]

“Even if Smith wasn’t in attendance, he must have heard about this dramatic event and discussed it with others, right? Wesley’s sermon was a famous and consequential event at the time, and it was also a university sermon, which, as far as we can tell, meant that a student like Smith was required to attend.[4] After all, wasn’t Smith required to study theology as part of his Snell Exhibition? And either way, did Smith attend any of Wesley’s other Oxford sermons, and if so, what did he make of Wesley and his ministry? More to the point, did Wesley’s brand of “Scriptural Christianity” (the title of his last sermon at Oxford) influence Smith’s religious views or his subsequent decision to ditch Oxford in 1746?”

Bonus links: for reference, here is the text of John Wesley’s final sermon at Oxford, and here is a summary. Also, check out this excellent lecture on the life of John Wesley by Ryan Reeves (PhD, Cambridge):

[1] See, e.g., Watson 2020. The complete text of Wesley’s last sermon at Oxford is available online: https://wesley.nnu.edu/john-wesley/the-sermons-of-john-wesley-1872-edition/sermon-4-scriptural-christianity/ [https://archive.ph/CLSp0].

[2] Griffiths 2023.

[3] For further details about Wesley’s final Oxford sermon, see Coleman 2017.

[4] Griffiths 2024. Cf. Coleman 2017, p. 2: “As an Oxford fellow, Wesley’s name was placed in the regular rotation of chapel preaching, and he was scheduled for the St. Mary’s canopied pulpit on August 24, 1744, overlooking the dozens of pews designated properly according to the roles of their occupants.”

Below is an excerpt from Chapter 4 (“Das Ambossproblem”) of my forthcoming survey of open Adam Smith problems with Salim Rashid (again, footnotes are below the fold):

“… The Wealth of Nations and Theory of Moral Sentiments were not the only books Adam Smith was working on during his lifetime. The Scottish philosopher also had ‘two other great works upon the anvil’ at the time of his death. (See Corr. No. 248 in Mossner and Ross’s edition of The Correspondence of Adam Smith.) By Smith’s own account, one work was ‘a philosophical history of literature, philosophy, poetry, and eloquence’ and was thus most likely based on a series of lectures that Smith gave when he was a professor at Glasgow (1751-63).[1] Although Smith never published this work, two centuries later two volumes of a handwritten manuscript titled ‘Notes of Dr. Smith’s Rhetorick Lectures’ were discovered by a professor of English literature, John M. Lothian, who published an edition of these lecture notes under the title we know them by today, Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres Delivered in the University of Glasgow by Adam Smith, Reported by a Student in 1762-63, or ‘LRBL’ for short.[2]

“The other great work that Smith was working on during his lifetime was ‘a book on the theory and history of law and government.’ Although this second book never saw the light of day, it was most likely based on a series of lectures on jurisprudence that Smith gave when he was a professor at Glasgow. Eventually, two sets of jurisprudence lecture notes, now referred to as LJ(A) and LJ(B), were discovered by subsequent generations of Smith scholars. Most scholars now agree that LJ(A) corresponds to Smith’s law lectures during the 1762-63 academic year, while LJ(B) relates to law lectures that were delivered—either by Smith himself, or his hand-picked substitute Thomas Young—during the 1763-64 academic year.[3]

“Before proceeding, one also wonders about Smith’s original lectures on logic, which he had delivered at the University of Glasgow during the 1751-52 academic term, his first year as a professor at Glasgow. What happened to those lecture notes? Curiously, as far as we can tell, Smith makes no further reference to his logic lectures. Was logic the one subject that failed to capture Smith’s boundless curiosity? Either way, the remaining sets of his surviving lecture notes—LRBL, LJ(A), and LJ(B)—may shed some light on Smith’s ‘two other great works on the anvil’, but at the same time serious pesky questions persist about the provenance and accuracy of these student notes. We still don’t know, for example, who wrote them,[4] and we also have no way knowing for sure just how accurate those notes are. After all, Smith’s theory of jurisprudence or his views on rhetoric may have changed over time. But the most important question is this: why did Smith destroy the manuscripts of his two other great works?”

Below is an excerpt from Chapter 3 (“TMS Problems”) of my forthcoming survey of open Adam Smith problems with Salim Rashid (footnotes are below the fold):

“Was Smith a closet consequentialist? Next, we want to share our favorite open problem from the pages of Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments (TMS). To the point, one of the most controversial—as well as memorable—passages in TMS occurs when Smith is explaining why crimes must be punished: ‘All men, even the most stupid and unthinking, abhor fraud, perfidy, and injustice, and delight to see them punished. But few men have reflected upon the necessity of justice to the existence of society, how obvious soever that necessity may appear to be.’ (TMS, II.ii.3.9) It is here, in Book II of TMS,[1] that Smith introduces the sleepy sentinel:

A centinel … who falls asleep upon his watch, suffers death by the laws of war, because such carelessness might endanger the whole army. This severity may, upon many occasions, appear necessary, and, for that reason, just and proper. When the preservation of an individual is inconsistent with the safety of a multitude, nothing can be more just than that the many should be preferred to the one. (TMS, II.ii.3.11)

“There are many competing interpretations of this passage (see, e.g., Paganelli and Simon 2022; pp. 281-282; Ueno 2021, pp. 306-307), for at the same time, immediately after writing that ‘the preservation of an individual is inconsistent with the safety of a multitude, nothing can be more just than that the many should be preferred to the one’, Smith then explains why condemning the sleepy sentinel to death would be deemed to be too harsh a penalty by most people:

Yet this punishment, how necessary soever, always appears to be excessively severe. The natural atrocity of the crime seems to be so little, and the punishment so great, that it is with great difficulty that our heart can reconcile itself to it. Though such carelessness appears very blamable, yet the thought of this crime does not naturally excite any such resentment, as would prompt us to take such dreadful revenge. A man of humanity must recollect himself, must make an effort, and exert his whole firmness and resolution, before he can bring himself either to inflict it, or to go along with it when it is inflicted by others. (Ibid.)

“Was this a mere hypothetical example, or was Smith thinking of an actual historical precedent? The Articles of War of the Royal Navy, which were originally enacted in the 1650s and amended by acts of Parliament in 1749 and in 1757, make sleeping during one’s watch an offense punishable by death.[2] Specifically, Section XXVII of the Royal Navy Articles of War of 1757 states:

Sleeping, negligence, and forsaking a station. No person in or belonging to the fleet shall sleep upon his watch, or negligently perform the duty imposed on him, or forsake his station, upon pain of death, or such other punishment as a court martial shall think fit to impose, and as the circumstances of the case shall require.

“By the same token, Article VI of Section XIV of the Articles of War of the British Army,[3] which was first enacted in 1663 (Childs 1994, p. 53), also make sleeping during one’s watch an offense punishable by death:

Of Duties in Quarters, in Garrison, or in the Field. Whatever Centinel shall be found sleeping upon his Post, or shall leave it before he shall be regularly relieved, shall suffer Death, or such other Punishment as shall be inflicted by the Sentence of a Court-martial.

“Furthermore, one British military historian, writing three decades after Smith’s death, refers to an anecdote involving Epaminondas, a Greek general and statesman of the 4th century BC: ‘Epaminondas, in making the circuit of his camp, slew a sentinel whom he found sleeping, using this memorable saying, “that he did him no harm, leaving him only as he found him”.’[4] Although we can find no other reference to this anecdote, did Smith have this example in mind?”

My colleague and friend Salim Rashid and I have been working on a new book-length manuscript tentatively titled Adam Smith Problems. (Here is our first draft.) In summary, we survey a wide variety of open problems and unsolved mysteries regarding Adam Smith the political economist (Chapters 1 & 2), Adam Smith the moral philosopher (Chapter 3), Adam Smith the rhetorician and law scholar (Chapter 4), Adam Smith the disenchanted student (Chapter 5) and the college dropout (Chapter 6), Adam Smith the professor (Chapter 7), Adam Smith the tourist and tutor (Chapter 8), Adam Smith the devotee of Voltaire (Chapter 9), Adam Smith the beloved (Chapters 10 & 11), and Adam Smith the customs commissioner (Chapter 12), just to name a few. Starting tomorrow, we will explore some open questions about Smith’s most famous work, The Wealth of Nations.