People like heroic narratives in intellectual history, but very little of what's in Adam Smith is new and unique to Smith. I picked my username semi-jokingly t

People like heroic narratives in intellectual history, but very little of what's in Adam Smith is new and unique to Smith. I picked my username semi-jokingly to draw attention to Francois Quesnay, who was a significant predecessor to Smith. But Quesnay isn't even unique -- you can point to any number of competitors. This is well-understood by actual historians of economic thought. The significance of Smith is that he's where everybody learned these ideas from, not because the ideas are necessarily new with him. "Wealth of Nations" as much of an act of synthesis as it is an act of creation.