ABSTRACT
Smith’s ‘History of Astronomy’ (written before 1758, though published only posthumously) applied this view to the natural sciences. So long as we can imaginatively extend what we perceive without running up against contrary experience, we feel secure in our knowledge. Yet even when we come upon phenomena which ‘appear solitary and incoherent with all that go before them, which therefore disturb the easy movement of the imagination’, science turns to the imagination, postulating principles and mechanisms that will ‘introduce order into this chaos of jarring and discordant appearances, allay this tumult of the imagination, and restore it . . . to that tone of tranquillity and composure, which is both most agreeable in itself, and most suitable to its nature’ (II.12). Social life, of course, was the main area in which Smith pursued this thesis. In society, one mind runs up against another and must turn to the imagination to harmonize their differences.
