This work was published posthumously (after death), in 1795, using material which Smith had intended to publish but had not prepared at the time of his death in 1790. This was done by his literary executors, two old friends from the Scottish academic world; physicist/chemist
Joseph Black and pioneering
geologistJames Hutton. A brief account of their work appears in a section entitled 'Advertisement by the Editors'.[1]
The History of Astronomy is the largest of these and is thought to have been written in the 1750s, before Smith's major works. The overall understanding is excellent, though the
Glasgow Edition of 1976 includes some detailed criticism of his use of sources. It also defends him for calling
Newton a philosopher rather than a
scientist; the word 'scientist' did not exist before 1839.
It also contains Smith's first mention of the
invisible hand:
For it may be observed, that in all
Polytheistic religions, among savages, as well as in the early ages of
heathenantiquity, it is the irregular events of nature only that are ascribed to the agency and power of the gods. Fire burns, and water refreshes; heavy bodies descend, and lighter substances fly upwards, by the necessity of their own nature; nor was the invisible hand of
Jupiter ever apprehended to be employed in those matters.[2]