Western Culture Global Presents The Top 100 Heroes of Western Culture These individuals have most contributed to replacing ignorance with knowledge, savagery with civilization, disease with health, tyranny with liberty, poverty with abundance, and despair with happiness. #15: Adam Smith (1723-1790) Adam Smith (1723-1790) was a Scottish political philosopher who is considered the father of economics. His famous work, The Wealth of Nations, is the or one of the first modern works in the field of economics and is, to a significant extent, a defense of capitalism. The Wealth of Nations is, in fact, the first comprehensive effort to study the nature of capital, the development of industry and the effects of large-scale commerce. While John Locke a century earlier made inroads into showing how rights are moral, Adam Smith made inroads into showing how rights, at least in the economic realm, are practical in that they lead to economic progress. It must be noted that at least some of Smith’s ideas, such as his labor theory of value, are deeply flawed. Nevertheless, his ideas overall represented a substantial leap forward and were critical in putting capitalism and industrialization on intellectual footing. Without Smith’s ideas, the economic progress of the past 200 years, progress that is far and away unequaled in human history, would have been greatly diminished. Go to #16: Benjamin Franklin Top 100 Western Culture Heroes — Home Top 100 Western Culture Heroes — by Numerical Order Top 100 Western Culture Heroes — by Century Top 100 Western Culture Heroes — by Category
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