Adam Smith: LII with an accent on LIE

"It is reason, principle, conscience, the inhabitant of the breast, the man within, the great judge and arbiter of our conduct."

"Among civilized and thriving nations, on the contrary, though a great number of people do no labor at all, many of whom consume the produce of ten times, frequently of a hundred times more labour than the greater part of those who work; yet the produce of the whole labour of the society is so great, that all are often abundantly supplied, and a workman, even of the lowest and poorest order, if he is frugal and industrious, may enjoy a greater share of the necessaries and conveniencies of life than it is possible for any savage to acquire."

"The greatest improvement in the productive powers of labour, and the greatest part of skill, dexterity, and judgment with which it is any where directed, or applied, seem to have been the effects of the division of labour."

"Nobody ever saw a dog make a fair and deliberate exchange of one bone for another with another dog."

For Adam Smith (1723–1790) the LII base accounts for the systematic-architectonic ambition, the concern with completeness, the general nerdy and scholarly orientation, and the long contemplative-academic career. The LIE accent accounts for what made him the founder of modern economics: the pragmatic engagement with how economies and societies actually work, and the future-oriented constructive vision of The Wealth of Nations. His famous absent-mindedness is also more typical for the LII professor stereotype (although it happens with LIE's who are more intuitive than average, too). And he was a theoretician of capitalism, not an entrepreneur himself.

Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759) and The Wealth of Nations (1776) are detailed, analytical, nerdy books about global problems. Political science professor Eric Schliesser accurately titled his recent study "Adam Smith: Systematic Philosopher and Public Thinker." The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy notes that "this last element — avoiding any gaps in the theory — is, perhaps, the most central element for Smith." The pluralism is also fairly typical LII. "Harmony of minds is not possible without free communication of settlements and opinion." His persistence in revising and refining the text across editions (TMS went through six editions, with substantial revision in each), the concern that the theory have no gaps — this pedantic-systematic register is LII. Your typical ILE writes more loosely, and is much more comfortable with provocative incompleteness. Smith was clearly quite a "rational" type.

Smith built a 3,000-volume library, lectured five mornings a week at 7:30, taught additional private classes three days a week (workaholism somewhat above average), and described his thirteen years as professor at Glasgow as "by far the most useful and therefore by far the happiest and most honorable period" of his life. He never married and lived with his mother for most of his life until her death six years before his own — such biographies generally reveal a person's weakness in all SF functions. The closest sustained relationship of his life was the twenty-six-year intellectual friendship with Hume. The contemplative scholar with a slight workaholic accent fits the LII-with-an-accent-on-LIE diagnosis.

He was a classical absent-minded-professor. Once he fell into a tanning pit while explaining free trade to a Whig politician, Charles Townshend. The other times he walked fifteen miles outside Kirkcaldy in his nightgown after losing track of his dressing, and put bread and butter into a teapot and brewed the result. He also talked to himself in rapt conversation with invisible companions from childhood. Smith clearly paid inadequate attention to the physical-practical world, pointing to quite an extreme position on the N-S dichotomy. He had told his publisher in 1780, with characteristic self-aware humor about his absent-mindedness: "I had almost forgot that I was the author of the inquiry concerning The Wealth of Nations." 

Despite his cleas social introversion, he had a warm sociability with the bright minds of his circle. He was elected dean of the Glasgow faculty in 1758 on the strength of "political tact and dispatch in managing the sometimes acerbic business" of academic administration, reflecting, perhaps, a higher capability to emotionally adapt to interlocutors ("emotivism", contact ethical functions) than a typical LII (where inversion of this sign is fairly common) and even Talanov-style De.  

The LIE accent contributed to him being the founder of economics. Smith's method in both major books is to begin with specific observations — pin factories, corn prices, the history of wages, vignettes of how people actually behave, the economic effect of particular policies — and to organize the observations into theoretical structures afterward. The Wealth of Nations was the result: a work whose conclusions about free trade being superior to mercantilism, and productive efficiency are arguments justified by systematic analysis of how economies actually work under conditions of free market. He shifted the view of national wealth from hoarded gold and silver (mercantilism) to the total production and commerce of a nation, acting as a precursor to modern GDP. While your typical LII, as a rational-democrat, is already quite future-minded, the LIE accent increased that aspect of Smith's cognition even further. Interestingly, he was one of the first to notice the gradual explosion of societal productivity that started around his time and was geniunely quite hard to perceive initially (Thomas Malthus in the following century still denied it). 

Smith resigned his Glasgow chair in 1764 and later, in 1778, took the Commissioner of Customs position for £600 annually. He understood money and could administer institutions effectively. Pure LII characteristically does less of this. (For a reverse case, a LIE with an accent on LII, David Ricardo is a possible typing).

He died in 1790 in Kirkcaldy, having ordered the destruction of his personal papers, leaving the two completed books and the lecture notes the destruction missed.