The Worldly Philosophers: The Lives, Times and Ideas of the Great Economic Thinkers

Let’s begin our journey in a world that, for most of history, would have seemed utterly familiar and yet strangely distant. Imagine a medieval village, where sons follow in their fathers’ footsteps, daughters inherit their mothers’ crafts, and the rhythm of life is set by the seasons and the decrees of local lords. In these societies, there was little thought of economic theory, for there was no need: life was governed by tradition and command. The rules were clear, the roles assigned, and change was met with suspicion or outright resistance.

But then, quietly at first and then with increasing force, something remarkable happened. The old certainties began to break down. Markets—once small, local affairs—grew in importance. The lure of gain, previously condemned as sinful, began to beckon. Merchants ventured further, goods traveled farther, and the idea of seeking profit for its own sake slowly gained acceptance. In this new world, the old ways of organizing work and distributing resources no longer sufficed. People were no longer content to simply do as their fathers had done; they wanted more, and they were willing to risk, innovate, and even challenge authority to get it.

This transformation was not smooth. It was marked by upheaval, resistance, and sometimes violence. Guilds fought to maintain their privileges, peasants rioted against enclosures, and authorities passed laws to suppress what they saw as dangerous innovations. Yet, inexorably, the market system spread. Land became a commodity, labor a contract, and capital something to be invested rather than hoarded. The world was being remade, and with it, a new kind of question emerged: How could a society of self-interested individuals possibly work? What invisible force could ensure that the baker baked, the weaver wove, and the miner mined, all without the guiding hand of tradition or the whip of command?

It was this puzzle that gave birth to economics as a field. For the first time, thinkers began to ask not just how much wheat to plant or how many coins to mint, but how the very fabric of society held together. They looked at bustling markets, at the rise and fall of fortunes, at the strange order that seemed to emerge from chaos, and they sought to understand it. Economics was born out of the need to explain the new world of the market.

In this section, we’ve glimpsed the profound shift from a world of tradition and command to one of markets and contracts. We’ve seen how unsettling, even frightening, this change was to those who lived through it. But we’ve also seen the seeds of something extraordinary: the idea that society could organize itself, not through the dictates of kings or the customs of ancestors, but through the free actions of individuals. As we move forward, we’ll meet the thinkers who tried to make sense of this new world—and whose ideas still shape our lives today. Next, let’s step into the world of the first great economist, and discover how he found order in the seeming chaos of the market.