Smith and the Organic Metaphors

Stefano Fiori ()
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Stefano Fiori: University of Torino

Chapter Chapter 4 in Machines, Bodies and Invisible Hands, 2021, pp 65-86 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract Organic metaphors were used in the seventeenth century to represent the distribution of resources in the political body in terms of “nutrition” and “digestion”. However, when Smith resorted to organic metaphors, he did not consider this tradition. Although he referred to a traditional image of the natural body, he used it to justify the political body’s self-adjustment processes. However, the metaphor of the body was imperfect, as Tucker, Ferguson and Smith himself, in some respects, showed. Although it made it possible to ostensively identify self-regulating properties, the organic metaphor was unable to clarify the notion of the progress of society.

Keywords: Nutrition; Organic metaphors; Medical metaphors; Body politick; Economic policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:sprchp:978-3-030-85206-1_4

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DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-85206-1_4

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