ABSTRACT
In his Theory of Moral Sentiments Adam Smith wrote that ‘Human society, when we contemplate it in a certain abstract and philosophical light, appears like a great, an immense machine, whose regular and harmonious movements produce a thousand agreeable effects’ (1976, 316). These words give expression to an explanatory ideal adhered to by economists to this day. René Descartes, Christiaan Huygens and Isaac Newton had taught mankind to see nature as a mechanism. Moral laws, John Locke had explained, are not essentially different from natural laws. The natural order of human society could thus be viewed as a system of stable relations.
