![]() Selection phenomenon – he then works his way down to an agent-less natural selectionįrom there (Burnett, 2009). In the case of natural selection, Darwin’s argument starts withĪrtificial selection and with a full blown agent being responsible for the The metaphor is restricted to a body part and thus to the physicalĪction, with no form of ‘thoughtful’ planning. It refers only to the hand, not to a fullĪgent. The invisible hand metaphor is able to fulfill this function by being a metaphor of ‘restricted’ agency, and by black-boxing different parts of the economic reasoning that are crucial but nonetheless out of economic investigation’s scope. I suggest that the invisible hand’s importance to economics was to be found in offering a way to acknowledge the existence of causal principles and links at play in a multitude of phenomena in economics. Is both imprecise and mostly rhetoric, how did it become so successful, and The ability of the invisible hand to fulfill any kind of epistemic role, i.e., produce any knowledge, has also been seriously called into question. ![]() An even more extensive list of candidates to be qualified as the invisible hand can be found in the third chapter of Erasing the invisible hand (Samuels, 2011). To this list, Grampp also adds his own understanding of the invisible hand, i.e., of it then being « self-interest operating in (…) the circumstance in which a private transaction yields a positive externality that augments a public good » (p. « The invisible hand has been interpreted to mean: (1) the force that makes the interest of one the interest of others, (2) the price mechanism, (3) a figure for the idea of unintended consequences, (4) competition, (5) the mutual advantage in exchange, (6) a joke, (7) an evolutionary process, (8) providence, (9) the force that restrains the export of capital. » (Grampp, 2000, p. The invisible hand has since been used, by economists and other social scientists, so with at least nine different meanings. The invisible hand metaphor did not meet success before the 1940s (see Kennedy, 2009, and Samuels, 2011), and was indeed popularized mostly by 20th century economists, who offered a large range of possible interpretations of the metaphor, and made it a scientific concept. Hand with a Stick, and Four People Sharing a Meal (Vincent van Gogh, 1885) Several authors (Kennedy, 2009 Grampp, 2000) also concur on the idea that the invisible hand was used by Adam Smith essentially as a rhetorical device, and did not imply a justificatory dimension. ![]() There have been numerous attempts to pinpoint what was meant by Adam Smith’s uses of the invisible hand. In the Theory of Moral Sentiments, the metaphor seems to relate to the ‘equal’ repartition of resources results from the landlord being unable to consume the totality of what is produced on his land. In the Wealth of Nations, the invisible hand appears in the context of describing how the preference of a merchant to keep his wealth in his home country contributes to the greater good. It appeared in only twice in relation to economic phenomena in his works (three times in total, the last one relates to astronomy). The invisible hand metaphor’s success is especially intriguing when considering how (parsimoniously) it was used by Adam Smith. I want to suggest that the lack of a precise definition was not a problem, but the precise reason why it got so successful: it offered a versatile label that could be used to refer to causal links across scales of analysis, while avoiding to commit to any more precise mechanistic explanation. It seems nearly impossible to find an agreement through the literature as to what the metaphor is, exactly, or which phenomena would count as occurrences of the invisible hand. Yet, the invisible hand also happens to also be a remarkably ill-defined metaphor. Quotes abound to state how important and pervasive the idea is (and was) for both economics and social sciences at large. ![]() ![]() Adam Smith’s invisible hand is a tremendously successful metaphor. ![]()
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