Smith’s legacy

IT CAN’T be gainsaid most people will be “delighted” Adam Smith’s house refurbishment is nearing completion (Jim Tough, Letters. 18 July). However, it may be debated if Smith’s legacy, as the father of modern economics, is “beyond question”.

Would he have recognised much of today’s economics with its algebraic and mathematical models? Did the proclivity for this methodology obscure the “bigger picture” in the run-up to the global financial crisis?

Perhaps Adam Smith would be better described as a political economist, as economics was once called. Have today’s university degree courses in economics shed economic history and the history of economic thought?

Arguably, and perhaps somewhat heretically, political economy will be taken up again, or controversially even economic philosophy.

Ellis Thorpe

Old Chapel Walk

Inverurie