Scottish Enlightenment
The Scottish Enlightenment was a period of intellectual ferment in Scotland, running from approximately 1730 to 1800.
The Act of Union 1707
In the period following the Act of Union 1707 Scotland's place in the world altered radically. Following the Reformation, many Scottish academics were teaching in great cities of mainland Europe but with the birth and rapid expansion of the new British Empire came a revival of philosophical thought in Scotland and a prodigious diversity of thinkers. Arguably the poorest[1] country in Western Europe in 1707, Scotland was then able to turn its attentions to the wider world without the opposition of England. Scotland reaped the economic benefits of free trade within the British Empire together with the intellectual benefits of having established Europe's first public education system since classical times. Under these twin stimuli, Scottish thinkers began questioning assumptions previously taken for granted; and with Scotland's traditional connections to France, then in the throes of the Enlightenment, the Scots began developing a uniquely practical branch of humanism to the extent that Voltaire said "We look to Scotland for all our ideas of civilisation."[2][3]
Empiricism and inductive reasoning
The first major philosopher of the Scottish Enlightenment was Francis Hutcheson,[4] who held the Chair of Philosophy at the University of Glasgow from 1729 to 1746. A moral philosopher with alternatives to the ideas of Thomas Hobbes, one of his major contributions to world thought was the utilitarian and consequentialist principle that virtue is that which provides, in his words, “the greatest happiness for the greatest numbers.”
Much of what is incorporated in the scientific method (the nature of knowledge, evidence, experience, and causation) and some modern attitudes towards the relationship between science and religion were developed by David Hume. "Like many of the learned Scots, he revered the new science of Copernicus, Bacon, Galileo, Kepler, Boyle, and Newton; he believed in the experimental method and loathed superstition."[4]
Adam Smith developed and published The Wealth of Nations, the first work in modern economics. This famous study, which had an immediate impact on British economic policy, still frames 21st century discussions on globalization and tariffs.[5]
Scottish Enlightenment thinkers developed what Hume called a "science of man"[6] which was expressed historically in works by such as James Burnett, Adam Ferguson, John Millar, and William Robertson, all of whom merged a scientific study of how humans behave in ancient and primitive cultures with a strong awareness of the determining forces of modernity. Gathering places in Edinburgh such as The Select Society and, later, The Poker Club, were among the crucibles from which many of the ideas which distinguish the Scottish Enlightenment emerged.
The focus of the Scottish Enlightenment ranged from intellectual and economic matters to the specifically scientific as in the work of William Cullen, physician and chemist, James Anderson, a lawyer and agronomist, Joseph Black, physicist and chemist, and James Hutton, the first modern geologist.[4][7] While the Scottish Enlightenment is traditionally considered to have concluded toward the end of the 18th century,[6] it is worth noting that disproportionately large Scottish contributions to British science and letters continued for another fifty years or more, thanks to such figures as James Hutton, James Watt, William Murdoch, James Clerk Maxwell, Lord Kelvin and Sir Walter Scott.
Important figures associated with the Scottish Enlightenment
Robert Adam (1728-1792) architect
James Anderson (1739-1808) agronomist, lawyer, amateur scientist
Joseph Black (1728-1799) physicist and chemist, first to isolate carbon dioxide
Hugh Blair (1718-1800) minister, author
James Boswell (1740-1795) lawyer, author of Life of Johnson
Thomas Brown (1778–1820), Scottish moral philosopher and philosopher of mind; jointly held the Chair of Moral Philosophy at Edinburgh University with Dugald Stewart
James Burnett, Lord Monboddo (1714-1799) philosopher, judge, founder of modern comparative historical linguistics
Robert Burns[8] (1759-1796) poet
Alexander Campbell (1788-1866) founder of the Restoration Movement
George Campbell (1719-1796) philosopher of language, theology, and rhetoric
Sir John Clerk of Eldin (1728-1812) prolific artist, author of An Essay on Naval Tactics; great-uncle of James Clerk Maxwell
William Cullen (1710-1790) physician, chemist, early medical researcher
Adam Ferguson (1723-1816) first formulated the concept of civil society
James Hall, 4th Baronet (1761-1832) geologist, geophysicist
Henry Home, Lord Kames (1696-1782) philosopher, judge, historian
David Hume (1711-1776) philosopher, historian, essayist
Francis Hutcheson (1694-1746) philosopher of metaphysics, logic, and ethics
James Hutton[8][7] (1726–1797) founder of modern geology
Sir John Leslie (1766-1832) mathematician, physicist, investigator of heat (thermodynamics)
James Mill (1773-1836) late in the period - Father of John Stuart Mill.
John Millar (1735-1801) philosopher, historian, historiographer
John Playfair (1748-1819) mathematician, author of Illustrations of the Huttonian Theory of the Earth
Allan Ramsay[9] (1686 - 1758) poet
Henry Raeburn[6] (1726-1823) portrait painter
Thomas Reid (1710-1796) philosopher, founder of the Scottish School of Common Sense
William Robertson (1721-1793) one of the founders of modern historical research
Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832) lawyer, novelist, poet
John Sinclair (1754 - 1835) politician, writer, the first person to use the word statistics in the English language
William Smellie (1740-1795) editor of the first edition of Encyclopædia Britannica
Adam Smith (1723-1790) whose The Wealth of Nations was the first modern treatise on economics
Dugald Stewart (1753-1828) moral philosopher
John Walker (naturalist) (1730-1803) Natural History Professor
James Watt (1736-1819) student of James Black; engineer, inventor (see Watt steam engine)