Introduction: What Is Faith?

Faith in invisible realities, once considered the exclusive province of religion, has pervaded physics since Newton, has created a counterintuitive new reality since Einstein, and was at the core of how Adam Smith viewed both human sociality in The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759; hereafter TMS) and national economies in The Wealth of Nations (1776; hereafter WN). The story I will tell of invisible realities from Newton though the Scottish Enlightenment to the Great Recession is the story of the physical world, then human social and economic systems, all subject to unannounced but discoverable rules of order.

But what is faith and how might it be relevant to science, economics, and religion? I propose to build upon a positive New Testament definition. It is expressed in the inimitable style of the anonymous learned author of Hebrews (11.1): “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for the evidence of things not seen.” The meaning expressed here, I believe, applies just as appropriately to science as to religion. My elaboration will be dispersed throughout the essay: briefly, for now, the idea is that, in science, theory provides the substance of hope; evidence is always indirect and in this sense is not seen.