“Whether someone’s treatment of the cognitions pertaining to reason does or does not follow the secure path of a science -this we can soon judge from the result. If, after many preparations and arrangements have been made, the treatment falters as soon as it turns to its purpose, or if, in order to reach that purpose, it repeatedly has to retrace its steps and enter upon a different path; or, again, if the various collaborators cannot be brought to agree on the manner in which their common aim is to be achieved – then we may rest assured that such an endeavour is still far from having entered upon the secure path of a science, but is a mere groping about.”
Kant in the preface to the ‘Critique of pure reason’

It is not unexpected that both Adam Smith and Immanuel Kant came out from what is now known as the Enlightenment, a term attributed to Kant himself. These tumultuous times of mankind produced some of the most revolutionary and innovative thoughts that aided human advancement. There are documents that suggest that Kant was aware and maybe even a fan of Smith’s work on ‘The Wealth of Nations’. But my understanding of Kant’s scientific rigour (and hence my urge to put in this blog) is that there is theory and then there is real science. Kant’s life work, or most of it, was to bring Philosophy from the obscure corners of myth into a proper science. I think that his preface to his ‘Critique of pure reason’ holds a lot of value if we are trying to separate what a science is from what it is not, namely the ‘mere groping about’ that he speaks of.

If I am allowed to call Mr.Smith the father of modern Economics, then let us allow him to be. But Economics is far from being a science, and it should not hold the sacred heights that our modern nations and policy makers put it up in. Smith’s views on morality, when compared to Kant’s thought may amount to merely a theory of human behaviour, a kind of Anthropology at best… but it is still groping about: It is not science. The odds of trying to model the future based on Economic theory -and being right-, are the same as the odds of a life invested in finding a living, breathing Chimera.

Adam Smith 1723-1790. Wrote ‘The Wealth of Nations’ in 1776
Immanuel Kant 1724-1804. Wrote the ‘Critique of pure reason’ in 1781