prior probability

Note: This blog post is based on the first draft of part 4 of my forthcoming paper with Alain Alcouffe, “Adam Smith and the salons of pre-revolutionary Paris” (footnotes omitted):

Located just a few steps from the Rue du Colombier was the Hôtel de la Rochefoucauld (formerly, the Hôtel de Liancourt), the Paris townhouse of one of Adam Smith’s Geneva contacts, Louise Elisabeth de La Rochefoucauld (1716-1797), Madame la duchesse d’Enville. Although she was little-remembered until the recent studies of Michèle Crogiez (2018) and Daniel Vaugelade (2002), in her lifetime she was a well-known salonnière and femme de lettres who hosted and corresponded with John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, and Adam Smith. Her Paris townhouse, the Hôtel de la Rochefoucauld, was located on the rue de Seine in the Faubourg Saint-Germain, just around the corner from the Rue du Colombier.

Her hôtel particulier was originally built in 1623 for the Count of Liancourt, who bequeathed it to his nephew, François de La Rochefoucauld, and it remained in the de La Rochefoucauld family until it was confiscated by the Revolution. As it happens, the Hôtel de la Rochefoucauld and its surrounding gardens—even a fountain and the individual trees in the garden—are represented in the Turgot map, a close-up of which is presented below:

So, did Adam Smith visit the Hôtel de la Rochefoucauld during his sojourn in Paris in 1766? How could he not have? Described as “a woman of great ability” and a “devoted friend of Turgot” (Rae 1895, p. 192), she first befriended Adam Smith during his sojourn in Geneva in late 1765. In summary, according to Dugald Stewart (1793, III.10; Wightman 1982, p. 303), it was in Geneva that Adam Smith “received many attentions” from the duchesse. For his part, John Rae (1895, p. 192) goes further. According to Rae, Smith was a “steady guest” at her house during his sojourn in Geneva. (See also Alcouffe & Guerra-Pujol, forthcoming.)

Accordingly, given their pre-existing friendship, the fact that both Smith and the duchesse found themselves in Paris for most of 1766, and the geographical proximity of their Parisian townhouses (see the close-up of Plate 11 of the Turgot map, pictured above), it is highly likely that Adam Smith attended the Duchesse d’Enville’s salon in Paris. Also, given the close friendship between the Duchesse d’Enville and the intendant Anne Robert Jacques Turgot, it is likely that it was here—in the salon of the Duchesse d’Enville—that Adam Smith met the influential free-market économiste.

Alas, the Hôtel de la Rochefoucauld was demolished after the Revolution in 1825. Today, this stretch of the rue de Seine, situated in the 6th arrondissement of Paris, is popular among tourists, since it is so close to many famed Parisian landmarks, including the Café de Flore, Les Deux Magots, and the Jardin du Luxembourg. For visual reference, pictured below are the original façade (as seen from the rue de Seine) and ground-floor plan of the original Hôtel de la Rochefoucauld (Hôtel de Liancourt) before it was torn down in 1825:

Note: This blog post is based on the first draft of part 3 of my forthcoming paper with Alain Alcouffe, “Adam Smith and the salons of pre-revolutionary Paris” (footnotes are below the fold):

Adam Smith’s primary residence during his sojourn in Paris in 1766 was the Hôtel Parc Royal on the rue du Colombier. Alas, the precise location of the Hôtel du Parc Royal is a mystery. For starters, a street-numbering ordinance was not enacted in Paris until 1768, two years after Smith’s stay in the French capital.[1] Also, according to the Dictionnaire Historique des Rues de Paris (Hillairet 1964, Vol. 1, p. 665), “rue du Colombier” was renamed “rue Jacob” in 1836. It is possible that the Parc Royal was located on today’s 37 rue Jacob or the present 41 rue Jacob; the entries for those particular street numbers in the Dictionnaire Historique des Rues de Paris read “Ex-hôtel” (ibid., p. 666).[2]

Nevertheless, although we do not know much about the Parc-Royal, we know that it was described as one of “the best hotels or lodging houses” in the “Quartier S. Germain des Pres” in the 1768 edition of The Gentleman’s Guide in his Tour through France,[3] and even more importantly, we also know that two of Smith contemporaries, his close friend David Hume and Horace Walpole, the son of a former prime minister, both lodged at the Parc-Royal during their stays in Paris. According to Mossner (1980, p. 504), for example, Hume had relocated to the Parc-Royal in November of 1765 and stayed there until his departure from Paris on January 4, 1766. For his part, Horace Walpole stayed at the Hôtel du Parc Royal from October 1765 until his departure from Paris in April 1766.[4] That such luminaries as David Hume and Horace Walpole would stay at the Parc-Royal is some indication of this hotel’s quality.[5] It is even possible that David Hume recommended the Parc-Royal to Adam Smith and that Smith occupied Hume’s rooms after the latter’s departure on January 4, 1766.

Today, the rue de Colombier is the rue Jacob, a quiet street in the 6th arrondissement of modern-day Paris.[6] At the time of Smith’s stay, however, the rue du Colombier and the rue Jacob formed one long street. Writing in May of 1766, for example, the Reverend William Cole describes the scene thus: “This Rue du Colombier, & the Rue Jacob make one long Street from the Rue du Seine quite down to the River; & the Rue des Petits Augustins, where I lodged came into this long Street, near the Joining together of the Rue du Colombier & the Rue Jacob” (Cole 1931, pp. 52-53, punctuation and spelling in the original).

Back in 1766, the Hôtel du Parc Royal and the rue de Colombier were not only located in one of the most fashionable quarters of Paris at the time, the Faubourg Saint-Germain;[7] they were also in very close proximity to three of the most famed salons of pre-revolutionary Paris, the salons of the Duchesse d’Enville in the hôtel de la Rochefoucauld and that of Madame du Deffand in the Convent of Saint-Joseph as well as the informal salon of her protégée and eventual rival, Mademoiselle Julie Lespinasse, located just down the street. Before proceeding, however, below is a close-up of the “Rue du Colombier,” as it appears on the 1739 Turgot map of Paris, for the reader’s reference. (Notice how close it is to the hôtel de la Rochefoucauld, the location of the salon of the duchess of d’Enville.)

Alain and I will resume our series on “Adam Smith and the salons of pre-revolutionary Paris” in our next post. In the meantime, via Wikipedia (footnotes omitted): “As of April 2025, 90 emergencies have been declared; 41 have expired and another 49 are currently in effect, each having been renewed annually by the president.” Why am I reminded of Aesop’s fable “The Boy Who Cried Wolf“? (Cf. this 2019 report by Katharina Buchholz, from which the infographic below is taken.)  

Today (18 May) would have been my friend Andre’s 53rd birthday. You were a loyal husband to Tricia, a devoted father to Zan, a loving son to Dexter and Marcia … and to me, a true friend and intellectual comrade-in-arms. We honor your memory; you will remain in our hearts forever …

Alas, I don’t know which tidbit from the excerpt embedded in the tweet above — originally published in this report by Clay Shirky in the Chronicle of Higher Education — is funnier: (A) that a Luddite professor at NYU really thinks he can “AI-proof” his assignments, or (B) that his lazy-ass Gen Z students complained that these anti-AI assignments interfered with their learning styles!

In addition to my many substantive refereed papers, law review articles, and book chapters (see here, for example), I have also authored a small handful of scholarly “micro-papers” over the years, i.e. published works consisting of three paragraphs or less. For reference, my most noteworthy mini-publications are listed in reverse chronological order below:

• Betting on Conspiracies?, Journal of Brief Ideas (July 17, 2021).
• Kant on Evidence: A Hypothetical Reply to Kerr, Green Bag 2d, Vol. 22, No. 4 (Summer, 2019), pp. 281-282.
• Bayesian Judges, Journal of Brief Ideas (December 28, 2019).
• Bayesian Verdicts, Journal of Brief Ideas (March 1, 2018).
• Research Fraud as Tort, Science, Vol. 349, No. 6255 (Sep. 25, 2015), pp. 1459-1460.
• Time-Travel Thought Experiment, Science, Vol. 341, No. 6141 (Jul. 5, 2013), pp. 28-29.
• Is stare decisis a sand castle?, Arizona State Law Journal (Oct. 1, 2012).
• Public Trust Doctrine: Too Broad?, Science, Vol. 326, No. 5949 (Oct. 2, 2009), pp. 45-46.

In addition to my scholarly research (law review articles, book chapters, etc.), I have also authored a few papers about teaching, including a law review article (“Teaching Tiger King”), a refereed paper (“So Long Sucker”), and a game book for an in-class role-play game (“Hacking Harvard”). Details are below:

• Teaching Tiger King, Saint Louis University Law Review, Vol. 65, No. 3 (Spring 2021), pp. 527-560. This fun paper explains how I redesigned business law and ethics survey course from scratch when my home institution moved all instruction online in the spring of 2020 in response to the global pandemic. (In summary, I decided to focus on the popular docuseries Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem, and Madness in order to make my online course as relevant, timely, and engaging as possible.)
• “So Long Suckers”: Bargaining and Betrayal in Breaking Bad, The Journal of Strategic Contracting and Negotiation, Vol. 3, No. 4 (2019), pp. 1-15. I wrote this paper to help my fellow college instructors convey strategic concepts and impart negotiation skills to their students through a four-person bargaining contest called “So Long Sucker” (see here), a board game that was invented in 1950 by four of the greatest game theorists of all time: Mel Hausner, John Nash, Lloyd Shapley, and Martin Shubik.
• Hacking Harvard: Law, Ethics, and the Dawn of the Facebook Era (2016). This is a general “game book” for a Reacting to the Past (RTTP) role-play game that I developed for my business law and ethics honors section at the University of Central Florida. This particular reacting game is centered around the Facemash hacking incident that occurred at Harvard in the fall of 2003. (For more information about this role-play method of teaching, see here and here.)

And from time to time, I have also made a few additional contributions (such as this one) to Faculty Focus, a semi-annual in-house journal published by my home institution’s Faculty Center.