Paper News and Thanks

Before leaving Edinburgh for France, I sent to several colleagues the early draft of my Paper, 'Adam Smith's Religiosity: a review of the evidence', and some responses have come in for which I am most grateful.

While offline, I worked on two revisions, mainly cutting down from 27,000 words to 17,000 and adding some clarifications (about -8,000 words net).

So far the responses have been positive and most helpful. It is quite an impertinence to impose on colleagues in this manner, so I will arrange a dinner for those involved in Edinburgh as a modest thank you.

I am encouraged to believe that The Paper is a modest contribution to Smithian scholarship and I look forward to presenting the finished paper at the History of Economic Thought Annual Conference in Denver, Colorado in June.

Speaking of which, the revised paper I presented to the HES annual conference in Fairfax, Virginia in 2007, and to the History of Economic Thought Conference in Edinburgh in 2008, 'Adam Smith and the Invisible Hand: from metaphor to myth', has just been published by Economic Journal Watch today (available online - apologies I do not yet have the URL here in France!).

There is a response from Daniel Kline of GMU also published in EJW (I have not read it yet - my long Internet address list is in Edinburgh - anybody who has got it who can pass it on will do me a favour, which I shall reciprocate, of course).

I am still setting up for a full service and hope to resume Blogging from tomoorrow.