Economics began as philosophy, not a separate science
Long before textbooks, Hesiod weighed scarce means against endless wants, Aristotle preferred private property with common use, and Aquinas demanded a just price. Economics only peeled away from philosophy amid the Industrial Revolution—and even Adam Smith's "father" title has rivals.
The history of economic thought tracks philosophies that later became political economy. Ancient Greeks already argued wealth and ownership: Aristotle asked whether property belongs in private or public hands, while Thomas Aquinas later treated a just selling price as a moral duty. In the West the subject stayed inside philosophy until the Industrial Revolution and Great Divergence sped growth and carved economics out as its own discipline.
Scarce means appear early. Hesiod, active about 750–650 BC and contemporary with Homer, devoted the first 383 of 828 verses in Works and Days to the clash between limited resources and abundant desires. In China, Fan Li (born 517 BCE) wrote business rules for King Goujian of Yue; Discourses on Salt and Iron (81 BCE) staged an early recorded fight over state intervention versus laissez-faire. Hindu Atharvaveda (around 1200 BC) voices economic ideas; Chanakya (born 350 BC) of the Maurya Empire co-authored the Arthashastra, ranking Vedas, philosophy, government science, and Varta—agriculture, cattle, and trade—as four necessary fields of knowledge. Xenophon's Oeconomicus (c. 360 BC) treats household management; Plato's Republic (c. 380–360 BC) discusses labor specialization and, Joseph Schumpeter later said, a credit theory of money. Aristotle's Politics (c. 350 BC) rejected Plato's communal blueprint as oligarchical, writing that property should be private but its use common, praising honorable household acquisition while scorning retail accumulation, usury, and monopoly, and favoring metallism over Plato's credit theory of coin.
Medieval and early modern writers sharpened price and money. Wang Anshi (1021–1086) made finance the state's main concern and urged production over tax hikes. Ye Shi (1150–1223) argued merchants created money as exchange medium and that currency should circulate, not merely store value. Aquinas (1225–74) defined a just price as covering production costs including a worker's family keep—akin to long-run equilibrium—and condemned hiking prices merely because buyers were desperate. Duns Scotus (1265–1308) stressed labor and expense yet saw buyer and seller rarely agree. Jean Buridan (c. 1300–after 1358) held that aggregate demand and supply set market prices. Until Spengler's 1964 essay on Ibn Khaldun (1332–1406), Adam Smith (1723–1790) was called economics' father; Ibn Khaldun analyzed civilization cycles, specialization, money as exchange rather than inherent store, and tax rates that can choke revenue. Nicolas d'Oresme (1320–1382) insisted currency belongs to the public, not a sovereign's profit.
Source: History of economic thought
