Adam Smith is celebrated as the author of The Wealth of Nations and the founder of modern economics. Yet Smith saw himself primarily as a philosopher rather than an economist, whose life's work was to establish a grand 'Science of Man', which was unfinished on his death and was one of the greatest projects of the European Enlightenment. Providing a radical new account of Smith's life and the intellectual ferment that gave rise to his ideas, this is a surprising and compelling portrait of one of the greatest minds of his age.