THE strongINVISIBLEstrong HAND’ AND THE ORDER OF NATURE i Peter Harrison.pdfVIP

ISSN 2045-5577 ORDER: GOD’S, MAN’S AND NATURE’S ‘THE INVISIBLE HAND’ AND THE ORDER OF NATUREi Peter Harrison Few phrases in the history of ideas have attracted as much attention as Smith’s ‘invisible hand’, and there is a large body of secondary literature devoted to it. In spite of this there is no consensus on what Smith might have intended when he used this expression, or on what role it played in Smith’s thought. Estimates of its significance range from the laudatory — ‘one of the great ideas of history’, to the dismissive — ‘an ii ironic joke’. Commentators are also divided on whether Smith’s ‘invisible hand’ has teleological or providential connotations, or whether it is simply a rhetorical device. John Kenneth Gailbraith declares that we do a grave disservice to Smith if we insist on understanding his invisible hand as a kind of ‘spiritual force’.iii Spenser J. Pack maintains that the invisible hand was ‘a rhetorical device which Smith made up, and knew he made up’ and certainly ‘not a theological underpinning for Smith’s social and/or economic theory.’iv Others have adopted the opposite view. Jacob Viner contended that Smith’s economic theory becomes unintelligible if ‘the invisible hand’ is evacuated of its theological significance.v For David A. Martin, Smith’s use of the phrase points to the foundational role played by divine wisdom in Smith’s thought, while for Andy Denis, ‘the invisible hand concept in Smith was entirely and unambiguously theological’.vi Surprisingly, given this situation, a systematic study of the uses of the expression before Smith has yet to be made.vii Indeed, it is not unusual to find claims that Smith invented the expression himself, or that