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Science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition. —“The Wealth of Nations” Adam Smith was the Scottish political economist and philosopher, who became famous for his influential book The Wealth of Nations written in 1776.In 1751 Smith was appointed professor of logic at Glasgow University. His lectures covered the field of ethics, rhetoric, jurisprudence and political economy. In 1759 he published his Theory of Moral Sentiment. This work was about those standards of ethical conduct that hold society together, with emphasis on the general harmony of human motives and activities. Smith moved to London in 1776, where he published An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, which examined in detail the consequences of economic freedom. It covered such concepts as the role of self-interest, the division of labor, the function of markets, and the international implications of a laissez-faire economy. Wealth of Nations established economics as an autonomous subject and launched the economic doctrine of free enterprise. Smith laid the intellectual framework that explained the free market and that still holds true today. He is most often recognized for the expression the invisible hand, which he used to demonstrate how self-interest guides the most efficient use of resources in a nations economy, with public welfare coming as a by-product. To underscore his laissez-faire convictions, Smith argued that state and personal efforts to promote social good are ineffectual compared to unrestrained market forces. Enlightenment — an intellectual and philosophical movement in Europe in 18th century It came as a result of the advance of modern science in 17th century. Scholars as Newton, Locke, Descartes questioned the accepted beliefs. The French thinkers Voltaire, Rousseau and other Encyclopedists attacked the established religions and embodied individual liberty and equality. The philosophers — Enlightenment thinkers of the