Hence they [the economists] can be called worldly philosophers, for they sought to embrace in a scheme of philosophy the most worldly of all of man’s activities – his drive for wealth. It is not, perhaps, the most elegant kind of philosophy, but there is no more intriguing or more important one. Who would think to look for Order and Design in a pauper family and a speculator breathlessly awaiting ruin, or seek Consistent Laws and Principles in a mob marching in a street and a greengrocer smiling at his customers? Yet it was the faith of the great economists that just such seemingly unrelated threads could be woven into a single tapestry, that at a sufficient distance the milling world could be seen as an orderly progression, and the tumult resolved into a chord.

Robert Heilbroner (2000). The Worldly Philosophers. The Lives, Times and Ideas of the Great Economic Thinkers, p 16. (7th edition, originally published 1953)