Adam Smith's Natural Theology and his System of Social Science

Natural Theology and the Qur’an

Natural theology is reading the book of nature, not the book of revelation, for knowledge of God. Natural theology, as a category employed by practitioners, originated within the history of Christianity, as passages from the New Testament such as Romans 1:20 raised the possibility of knowledge about God without revelation. The best-known work of natural theology is William Paley’s (d. 1805 AD) ...

A Modern Natural Theology?

Putting Adam Ferguson in his place.

This paper re-conceptualizes the relationship between Ferguson's life and work by locating him in his biographical and geographical context for the purposes of better understanding his proto-sociological writings. Ferguson's work is relatively unknown outside limited sets of literature and current representations of the link between his life and work risk misplacing him as both Scotsman and soc...

Gods and giants: Cudworth’s platonic metaphysics and his ancient theology

The Cambridge Platonists are modern thinkers and the context of seventeenthcentury Cambridge science is an inalienable and decisive part of their thought. Cudworth’s interest in ancient theology, however, seems to conflict with the progressive aspect of his philosophy. The problem of the nature, however, of this ‘Platonism’ is unavoidable. Even in his complex and recondite ancient theology Cudw...

The Same Face of the Two Smiths: Adam Smith and Vernon Smith