Smith still once again

JKSCHW at aol.com JKSCHW at aol.com
Fri Oct 16 20:53:37 PDT 1998


In a message dated 98-10-16 13:04:31 EDT, you write:

<<

There was a mention of Newton by John Taber; did you guys know that Newton's original

manuscripts were written in Latin. I wonder if Smith's originals were in Latin?

>>

They were not. Newton wrote at a t time when Latin was the international scholarly language. By Smith's era--the Wealth of Nations is 1776, almost a century after the Principia, this was not true. Smith, like Hume, indeed, like Berkeley a generation and a half earlier, wrote in English. This trend was started, actually, by Galileo and Descartes, who wrote some of their important works in what was called "the vernacular."

--jks



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