How has economic science emerged: Competition of blueprints

Abstract

The formation of economics as a science is traditionally referenced to Adam Smith and presented — even if with reservations — as an ascent from delusions to true theory, underlying almost all modern schools of economic thought. Despite the importance of Smith’s Wealth of Nations, such a view does not reflect the real course of the evolvement of scientific economic knowledge and prevents adequate perception of the logic of its subsequent development. The article substantiates the need to rethink the initial phase of the history of economic science on the basis of a closer linkage of this history with the scientific revolution, which created conditions for the emergence of a whole range of blueprints of scientific economics, associated with such names as William Petty, John Law, James Steuart. It is shown that the blueprint of theoretical economics, which set the course for the development of economic science and was personified by Adam Smith, relied heavily on the work of Richard Cantillon, who generalized knowledge and experiences of mercantilist writers on the methodological basis that arose during the scientific revolution of the 17th — early 18th centuries.