THE THINKING OF THE SCOTTISH ENLIGHTENMENT THINKERS? The theme of the “unintended and unanticipated consequences of social action” implies that social change occurs through social action without foreseeing the outcome. Scottish Enlightenment thinkers Adam Smith and Adam Ferguson, each provide their own theory of unanticipated effects of human action. Smith’s theory is implicitly historicist; Ferguson’s by contrast, is empirical and anti-historicist(Smith, 1998:30).In Adam Smith’s, “Wealth of Nations”, private and egoistic interests are converted into collective social good by an ‘invisible hand’ which advances ‘the interest of society’ without intending or knowing it(Smith, 1998:30-31). Smith illustrates this through his discussion of the development of the commercial society. “Smith described initially the structural forces which led to the decline of the feudal society and property and the necessary evolution of trade and manufacture”(Smith, 1998:30). This social change, in Smith’s view, was “unintended and unanticipated consequence of social action”. The key to understanding this transition, Smith argued, was the actions of two contending social groups, the rich barons whose concern was with social status and ornament led to their gradual impoverishment and more secular, and efficient merchant class whose manufactured goods brought the ruin of the great landowners(Smith, 1998:30). Thus, the social action of the merchant class brought upon the social change that was unexpected in feudal society. Therefore, this social change that Smith explains, illustrates his perspective of how social change was brought upon unintentionally by individuals serving their self-interest. Adam Ferguson viewed society functioning as a whole. Ferguson, in contrast to Adam Smith, developed no link between the social actions of individuals, as members...
