Einstein's original paper is actually not a bad introduction to special relativity, by the way. The notation hasn't substantially changed since then, and if your German is even moderately good his style is quite readable.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

I think you're just wrong on this.

My background is in Mathematics, Physics and Statistics. I have also dabbled in Economics. I have read classic works in all these disciplines. I have Newton's Principia annotated by Chndrasekhar. I have read Archimedes in a couple of different languages and styles of translation. I have read original works from the 17th and 18th hundreds on Probability, and foundations works from the 1920's and 30's. I have read Hilbert's foundations of geometry in the original, I have read Dirac and Feynman, and a collection of original papers on Relativity from 1900 to 1920, and original papers on the interpretation of quantum mechanics all the way from the 1920's. Although my education provided the occasion and in some cases the access to these sources, none of this reading was required for my education, despite what you say here:

When I say no one reads the founders of various scientific disciplines, I'm excluding the study which may take place in the course of one's education, where it is customary to trace the development of science by looking at the accomplishments of various individual scientists. This is a pedagogical use, not a professional one.

In fact, the only people who read the classics and write about them are researchers when they want to go back to principles and cut through the layers of misinterpretation that academics and teachers have heaped on the original sources. Einstein's 1915 paper on GR reads better than many modern textbooks (with some well-known exceptions), but nobody reads Einstein.

In fact, it is in experimental and mathematical sciences that one can go back and read the original sources and they remain as correct as they were back then, because the laws of physics and mathematical truth don't change with time, unlike social sciences which are concerned as much with a putative "human nature" as with the political issues of the day. This doesn't mean that there's no interest in reading classics of the social sciences, and that also has a lot of value, even more given that it is easier to heap layers of misinterpretation or distortion on social science works than it is on "exact" science works. My secondary education did require (unlike my natural science education all the way to the PhD) reading excerpts from greek all the way to modern philosophers, reading The Prince in full for instance and a lot more. And when I turned to trying to learn economics I found textbooks to be a load of tosh and got a lot more from reading Smith, J S Mill or Keynes. Partly because any misinterpretation or distortion by others will be absent, but also because political economy makes more sense in its historical context. Historical context plays a very minor role in the content of "exact" sciences - and when it does it is quaint and amusing (as in when De Moivre uses the Central Limit Theorem to prove the existence of God).

So I disagree with you here:

There seems to be one important exception to this and it is in the field of economics. People discussing economics still quote Adam Smith, Malthus, Ricardo and others who wrote several centuries ago. For a discipline that wants to be seen as a (social) science, this seems odd. The founders of economics lived in times much different than those at present. Societies were not very democratic (if at all), industrialization was just beginning and only affected a few industries such as textiles. In addition monetary policy was still based upon having reserves of precious metals and convertibility between national currencies (or even the use of paper money) was not common. All this has changed, yet the ideas of the founders are still taken as having applicability to present society.

These works should be read (in their historical context) and not (mis)quoted out of context. There is a lot of value in them.

To make the statements of the key philosophers of economics still sound relevant it is common to see that the assumptions that they adopted being ignored when claiming relevance for their ideas.

This is true, but the solution is not to stop quoting them, but to start reading them (something most people who regurgitate classical economics quotes haven't bothered doing because, again, it wasn't required by their education).

Whether this propensity be one of those original principles in human nature, of which no further account can be given, or whether, as seems more probable, it be the necessary consequence of the faculties of reason and speech, it belongs not to our present subject to inquire. It is common to all men, and to be found in no other race of animals, which seem to know neither this nor any other species of contracts. Two greyhounds, in running down the same hare, have sometimes the appearance of acting in some sort of concert. Each turns her towards his companion, or endeavours to intercept her when his companion turns her towards himself. This, however, is not the effect of any contract, but of the accidental concurrence of their passions in the same object at that particular time. Nobody ever saw a dog make a fair and deliberate exchange of one bone for another with another dog. Nobody ever saw one animal, by its gestures and natural cries signify to another, this is mine, that yours; I am willing to give this for that. When an animal wants to obtain something either of a man, or of another animal, it has no other means of persuasion, but to gain the favour of those whose service it requires. A puppy fawns upon its dam, and a spaniel endeavours, by a thousand attractions, to engage the attention of its master who is at dinner, when it wants to be fed by him. Man sometimes uses the same arts with his brethren, and when he has no other means of engaging them to act according to his inclinations, endeavours by every servile and fawning attention to obtain their good will. He has not time, however, to do this upon every occasion. In civilized society he stands at all times in need of the co-operation and assistance of great multitudes, while his whole life is scarce sufficient to gain the friendship of a few persons. In almost every other race of animals, each individual, when it is grown up to maturity, is entirely independent, and in its natural state has occasion for the assistance of no other living creature. But man has almost constant occasion for the help of his brethren, and it is in vain for him to expect it from their benevolence only. He will be more likely to prevail if he can interest their self-love in his favour, and shew them that it is for their own advantage to do for him what he requires of them. Whoever offers to another a bargain of any kind, proposes to do this. Give me that which I want, and you shall have this which you want, is the meaning of every such offer; and it is in this manner that we obtain from one another the far greater part of those good offices which we stand in need of. It is not from the benevolence of the butcher the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity, but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities, but of their advantages. Nobody but a beggar chooses to depend chiefly upon the benevolence of his fellow-citizens. Even a beggar does not depend upon it entirely. The charity of well-disposed people, indeed, supplies him with the whole fund of his subsistence. But though this principle ultimately provides him with all the necessaries of life which he has occasion for, it neither does nor can provide him with them as he has occasion for them. The greater part of his occasional wants are supplied in the same manner as those of other people, by treaty, by barter, and by purchase. With the money which one man gives him he purchases food. The old clothes which another bestows upon him he exchanges for other clothes which suit him better, or for lodging, or for food, or for money, with which he can buy either food, clothes, or lodging, as he has occasion.

THE THEORY OF THE MORAL SENTIMENTS and THE WEALTH OF NATIONS were a part of a project by Smith to recast the foundations of our understanding of human nature and society upon naturalistic, rather than providential, grounds--otherwise known as "The Enlightenment Project."  This is another reason to doubt that Smith intended the metaphor of the "invisible hand" to represent the action of some divine entity.  That would be the antithesis of all of his work.

I have the Complete Works of Adam Smith and have read significant parts of TMS and WN.  I have read Muller in his entirety. Muller seems to be a good guide to Smith's works.  The Neo-Classical Economists have cherry picked Smith mostly for the "invisible hand" metaphor, which they mis-interpret and they never, to my knowledge, cite his strictures about the need for government regulation of markets to insure their integrity.

"It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."

And, of course, Smith lived in a time before the stock exchange, so he can hardly be faulted for not realising how immensely profitable pure gambling could be.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

But those coincidences are not a given. Opposite coincidences (mostly of individual good, public cost) do obviously happen. In the economic evolution, they were not selected away yet. Even more, post-Smith ideological extrapolation swayed us into accepting that individual profit must not be opposed no matter what. But we are not always luckily blessed with public consequences, to put it mildly. Even well-intended (perhaps...) schemes of incentives mechanisms do not work particularly organically nicely.