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Both the genesis and nature of these essays require explanation. I started working on the invisible-hand project in 1983. My initial examinations of material nourished my interest as an intellectual historian. As the examined materials continued to grow, so too did the facets, related topics, implications, and overall breadth of the topic and the magnitude of the relevant materials. Captivated, I gradually started to understand how human beings could become so enamored with invisibility in general and the invisible hand in particular, such that the invisible hand began to have a linguistic, ontological, and epistemological significance. Reference to the invisible hand is ubiquitous. The growth of the Internet, coupled with people’s desire to have written materials they consider important made available to others (often in translation), has vastly increased the volume and ease of acquisition of relevant materials. The volume of relevant source material reasonably pertinent to a project such as the present one is daunting. This is especially true of a topic that has ramifications with so much else that goes on in society. Only a small percentage of such materials can be used in reaching understanding and conclusions, even if the researcher is avid. And the researcher has to be careful in amassing and interpreting information, for well-known reasons.

The physical problem of producing a detailed study under the conditions I allowed myself to develop cannot be overstated. It is not a project for a young person who, on the one hand, must publish, and on the other, lacks the time in which the range, complexity, and interconnections of ideas can be nurtured. It is a project for a team, not one person, however able and motivated. The enormity of the materials on which the account will ultimately be based is mind-boggling. I have the equivalent of at least forty file drawers (that is, ten four-drawer filing cabinets) of published and unpublished materials, to which must be added several sizeable boxes of note slips and one-quarter or more of a library running to at least twelve thousand books and journals.