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The objective of this paper is to account for an apparent paradox that has in recent years characterized the discipline of Economics, particularly the domain of Macroeconomics: on the one hand, a very strong emphasis on empirical observation and empirical testing of hypotheses as the foundations of scientific method and the criteria for knowledge validation; and a very extensive use of Smith’s notion of “Invisible Hand’ and the manner in which it “works its magic”, on the other. The paper places the construction of Smith by contemporary economists in the context of the historical development of economic thought, and particularly of the transformation of Political Economy into “pure” Economics, emptied of any reference to non-economic issues, and constructed along the lines of classical (Newtonian) physics. It is argued that such widespread use of the term “Invisible Hand” can be explained by the inability of the discipline, constrained by its definition of what it means to be scientific, to adequately theorize aggregate or structural processes in other than methodologically individualist and reductionist terms, denying any legitimate ontological status to non observable phenomena. It is suggested that the “Invisible Hand’ of Smith performs for Macroeconomics the same role as the one played by the deus ex machine of imagined “auctioneer” of Walras for Microeconomics : it is an attempt to back up the claim that free markets will necessarily result in a market-clearing and Pareto-optimal allocation of resources, which the discipline, dealing with social and not natural phenomena, is obviously unable to prove in any “scientific” way.