h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

It should be emphasized that when Adam Smith attended Oxford it was a complete intellectual backwater (and was to remain so until the 20th century). Smith was educated at Glasgow learning from Francis Hutcheson, one of the fathers of the Scottish Enlightenment, and most of Smiths ideas were formed by discussions with other Scottish intellectuals in Glasgow and Edinburgh. I think it cannot be emphasized too much that Scotland was the leading intellectual country by some distance in the second half of the 18th century. Smith himself said he learnt nothing at Oxford.