"Adam Smith: An Enlightened Life"

For many years, I have exchanged books for Christmas with a mentor and close friend.

This year I have received:

Adam Smith: An Enlightened Life

Nicholas Phillipson (Yale University Press, 2010)

The book is about Smith's seminal intellectual and philosophical work, and its emergence as economic science.

Perhaps more importantly, the book portrays the interaction between Smith and his close friend, the historian David Hume, and the quest to establish a grand "Science of Man."

I have read part of Hume's "History of England" and it is extremely well written, containing deep insights into human behavior, leadership, politics, and the fundamental aspects of organization, government, and freedom. One of my intellectual goals for 2011 is to finish all volumes.

Though I have a firm and unrelenting belief in technology as a means of advancement for civilization (with MIT as a leader), I very much believe in the insights provided by human history. Our life is much better for the work of authors and thinkers such as Adam Smith, David Hume, Edward Gibbon, John Locke, Edmund Burke, Samuel Adams, and Thomas Jefferson.

To ignore these and others means that our view of the technological world can only be partial. Often it is the lessons of history and human experience that give advances in science, engineering, and business their true meaning. So many forget this simple reality.

I have great admiration for the period of the 18th century Scottish Enlightenment.