The Scottish Enlightenment was the period in 18th century Scotland Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the southwest. In addition to the mainland, Scotland characterised by an outpouring of intellectual and scientific accomplishments. By 1750, Scots Christianity ; other minority groups; agnostics and atheists were among the most literate citizens of Europe Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally divided from Asia to its east by the water divide of the Ural Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian Sea, the Caucasus region (Specification of borders) and the Black Sea to the southeast. Europe is bordered by the, with an estimated 75% level of literacy Literacy has traditionally been described as the ability to read and write. It is a concept claimed and defined by a range of different theoretical fields. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization defines literacy as the "ability to identify, understand, interpret, create, communicate, compute and use printed and.[1]

Sharing the humanist and rationalist outlook of the European Enlightenment The Age of Enlightenment is the era in Western philosophy and intellectual, scientific and cultural life, centered upon the eighteenth century, in which reason was advocated as the primary source and legitimacy for authority of the same time period, the thinkers of the Scottish Enlightenment asserted the fundamental importance of human reason Reason is a mental faculty found in humans, that is able to generate conclusions from assumptions or premises. In other words, it is amongst other things the means by which rational beings propose reasons, or explanations of cause and effect. In contrast to reason as an abstract noun, a reason is a consideration which explains or justifies combined with a rejection of any authority Authority, from the Latin word auctoritas, means invention, advice, opinion, influence, or command. Essentially authority is imposed by superiors upon inferiors either by force of arms or by force of argument (sapiential authority). Usually authority has components of both compulsion and persuasion. For this reason, as used in Roman law, authority which could not be justified by reason. They held to an optimistic The Oxford English Dictionary defines optimism as having "hopefulness and confidence about the future or successful outcome of something; a tendency to take a favourable or hopeful view." The word is originally derived from the Latin optimum, meaning "best." Being optimistic, in the typical sense of the world, ultimately means belief in the ability of man to effect changes for the better in society A Society or a human society is a group of people related to each other through persistent relations such as social status, roles and social networks. Human societies are characterized by patterns of relationships between individuals sharing a distinctive culture and institutions. Without an article, the term refers either to the entirety of and nature Nature, in the broadest sense, is equivalent to the natural world, physical world, or material world. "Nature" refers to the phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general. It ranges in scale from the subatomic to the cosmic, guided only by reason.

It was this latter feature which gave the Scottish Enlightenment its special flavour, distinguishing it from its continental European counterpart. In Scotland, the Enlightenment was characterised by a thoroughgoing empiricism In philosophy, empiricism is a theory of knowledge that asserts that knowledge arises from evidence gathered via sense experience. Empiricism is one of several competing views that predominate in the study of human knowledge, known as epistemology. Empiricism emphasizes the role of experience and evidence, especially sensory perception, in the and practicality where the chief virtues Virtue is moral excellence. A virtue is a trait or quality deemed to be morally excellent and thus is valued as a foundation of principle and good moral being were held to be improvement, virtue, and practical benefit for both the individual As commonly used, an individual is a person or any specific object in a collection. In the 15th century and earlier, and also today within the fields of statistics and metaphysics, individual means "indivisible", typically describing any numerically singular thing, but sometimes meaning "a person." . From the seventeenth and society as a whole.

Among the advances of the period were achievements in philosophy Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems concerning matters such as existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. It is distinguished from other ways of addressing fundamental questions by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational argument. The word "philosophy" comes from the, political economy Political economy originally was the term for studying production, buying and selling, and their relations with law, custom, and government. Political economy originated in moral philosophy. It developed in the 18th century as the study of the economies of states—polities, hence political economy, engineering Engineering is the discipline, art and profession of acquiring and applying technical, scientific, and mathematical knowledge to design and implement materials, structures, machines, devices, systems, and processes that safely realize a desired objective or invention, architecture A wider definition may comprise all design activity, from the macro-level to the micro-level (construction details and furniture). Architecture is both the process and product of planning, designing and constructing form, space and ambience that reflect functional, technical, social, and aesthetic considerations. It requires the creative, medicine Medicine is the science and art of healing. It encompasses a range of health care practices evolved to maintain and restore health by the prevention and treatment of illness. Before scientific medicine, healing arts were practised in accordance with alchemical treatments and ritual practices that developed out of religious and cultural traditions, geology Geology is the science and study of the physical matter and energy that constitute the Earth. The field of geology encompasses the study of the composition, structure, properties, and history of the planet's physical material, the processes by which it is formed, moved, and changed, the history of life on Earth, and human interactions with the, archaeology Archaeology, or archeology , is the study of past human societies, primarily through the recovery and analysis of the material culture and environmental data which they have left behind, which includes artifacts, architecture, biofacts and cultural landscapes. Due to the fact that archaeology employs a wide range of different procedures, it can be, law Law is a system of rules, usually enforced through a set of institutions. Laws can shape or reflect politics, economics and society in numerous ways and serves as a primary social mediator of relations between people. Contract law regulates everything from buying a bus ticket to trading on derivatives markets. Property law defines rights and, agriculture Agriculture is the production of food and goods through farming. Agriculture was the key development that led to the rise of human civilization, with the husbandry of domesticated animals and plants creating food surpluses that enabled the development of more densely populated and stratified societies. The study of agriculture is known as, chemistry Chemistry is the science of matter and the changes it undergoes. The science of matter is also addressed by physics, but while physics takes a more general and fundamental approach, chemistry is more specialized, being concerned with the composition, behavior, structure, and properties of matter, as well as the changes it undergoes during chemical, and sociology Sociology is the study of society. It is a social science—a term with which it is sometimes synonymous—that uses various methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop and refine a body of knowledge about human social activity, often with the goal of applying such knowledge to the pursuit of social welfare. Subject matter. Among the outstanding Scottish thinkers and scientists of the period were Francis Hutcheson Francis Hutcheson was a philosopher born in Ireland to a family of Scottish Presbyterians who became one of the founding fathers of the Scottish Enlightenment, Alexander Campbell Alexander Campbell was an early leader in the Second Great Awakening of the religious movement that has been referred to as the Restoration, or Stone-Campbell Movement. The Campbell wing of the movement began with the publication in Washington County, Pennsylvania, of The Declaration and Address of the Christian Association of Washington in 1809,, David Hume David Hume was a Scottish philosopher and historian, regarded as one of the most important figures in the history of Western philosophy and the Scottish Enlightenment. Hume is often grouped with John Locke, George Berkeley, and a handful of others as a British Empiricist, Adam Smith Adam Smith was a Scottish moral philosopher and a pioneer of political economics. One of the key figures of the Scottish Enlightenment, Smith is the author of The Theory of Moral Sentiments and An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. The latter, usually abbreviated as The Wealth of Nations, is considered his magnum opus and, Thomas Reid Thomas Reid , Scottish philosopher, and a contemporary of David Hume, was the founder of the Scottish School of Common Sense, and played an integral role in the Scottish Enlightenment. The early part of his life was spent in Aberdeen, Scotland, where he created the 'Wise Club' (a literary-philosophical association) and graduated from the, Robert Burns Robert Burns (also known as Rabbie Burns, Scotland's favourite son, the Ploughman Poet, Robden of Solway Firth, the Bard of Ayrshire and in Scotland as simply The Bard) was a Scottish poet and a lyricist. He is widely regarded as the national poet of Scotland, and is celebrated worldwide. He is the best known of the poets who have written in the, Adam Ferguson Adam Ferguson, also known as Ferguson of Raith (20 June 1723 (July 1, N.S.) - 22 February 1816) was a philosopher and historian of the Scottish Enlightenment. He is sometimes called "the father of modern sociology.", John Playfair John Playfair FRSE, FRS was a Scottish scientist and mathematician, and a professor of natural philosophy at the University of Edinburgh. He is perhaps best known for his book Illustrations of the Huttonian Theory of the Earth (1802), which summarized the work of James Hutton. It was through this book that Hutton's principle of uniformitarianism,, Joseph Black Joseph Black FRSE FRCS was a Scottish physician, known for his discoveries of latent heat, specific heat, and carbon dioxide. He was professor of Medicine at University of Glasgow (where he also served as lecturer in Chemistry). James Watt, who was appointed as philosophical instrument maker at the same university (1756), became involved in Black' and James Hutton James Hutton MD (Edinburgh, 3 June 1726 OS – 26 March 1797) was a Scottish geologist, physician, naturalist, chemist and experimental farmer. He is considered the father of modern geology. His theories of geology and geologic time, also called deep time, came to be included in theories which were called plutonism and uniformitarianism.

The Scottish Enlightenment had effects far beyond Scotland itself, not only because of the esteem in which Scottish achievements were held in Europe and elsewhere, but also because its ideas and attitudes were carried across the Atlantic The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's oceanic divisions. With a total area of about 106,400,000 square kilometres , it covers approximately twenty percent of the Earth's surface and about twenty-six percent of its water surface area. The first part of its name refers to the Atlas of Greek mythology, making the Atlantic the " as part of the Scottish diaspora A diaspora is the movement or migration of a group of people, such as those sharing a national and/or ethnic identity, away from an established or ancestral homeland. When capitalized, the Diaspora refers to the exile of the Jewish people and Jews living outside ancient or modern day Israel which had its beginnings in that same era. As a result, a significant proportion of technological and social development in the United States, Canada and New Zealand in the 18th and 19th centuries were accomplished through Scots-Americans and Scots-Canadians.

Contents

After the Act of Union 1707

In the period following the Act of Union 1707 The Acts of Union were a pair of Parliamentary Acts passed in 1707 by the Parliament of Scotland and the Parliament of England to put into effect the terms of the Treaty of Union that had been agreed on 22 July 1706, following negotiation between commissioners representing the parliaments of the two countries. The Acts joined the Kingdom of[citation needed], Scotland's place in the world was altered radically. Following the Reformation The Scottish Reformation was Scotland's formal break with the Papacy in 1560, and the events surrounding this. It was part of the wider European Protestant Reformation; and in Scotland's case culminated ecclesiastically in the re-establishment of the church along Reformed lines, and politically in the triumph of English influence over that of the, many Scottish academics Academia, Acadème, or the Academy are collective terms for the community of students and scholars engaged in higher education and research were teaching in great cities of mainland Europe Continental Europe, also referred to as mainland Europe or simply the Continent, is the continent of Europe, explicitly excluding European islands. Notably, in British English usage, the term means Europe excluding the United Kingdom, the Isle of Man, the Channel Islands, Ireland and Iceland but with the birth and rapid expansion of the new British Empire The British Empire comprised the dominions, colonies, protectorates, mandates, and other territories ruled or administered by the United Kingdom, that had originated with the overseas colonies and trading posts established by England in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. At its height it was the largest empire in history and, for over a came a revival of philosophical thought in Scotland and a prodigious diversity of thinkers.

Arguably the poorest[2] country in Western Europe Western Europe is a loose term for the collection of countries in the westernmost region of Europe, though this definition is context-dependent and carries cultural and political connotations. One definition describes Western Europe as a cultural entity—the region lying west of Central Europe. Another definition was created during the Cold War in 1707, Scotland was then able to turn its attentions to the wider world without the opposition of England The area now called England has been settled by people of various cultures for about 35,000 years, but it takes its name from the Angles, one of the Germanic tribes who settled during the 5th and 6th centuries. England became a unified state in AD 927, and since the Age of Discovery, which began during the 15th century, has had a significant. Scotland reaped the economic benefits of free trade Free trade is a system of trade policy that allows traders to act and or transact without interference from government. According to the law of comparative advantage the policy permits trading partners mutual gains from trade of goods and services within the British Empire together with the intellectual benefits of having established Europe's first public education system Scotland has a long history of universal provision of public education, and the Scottish education system is distinctly different from other parts of the United Kingdom since classical Classical antiquity is a broad term for a long period of cultural history centered on the Mediterranean Sea, comprising the interlocking civilizations of Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome, collectively known as the Greco-Roman world. It is the period in which Greek and Roman literature (such as Aeschylus, Ovid, Homer and others) flourished times. Under these twin stimuli, Scottish thinkers began questioning assumptions previously taken for granted; and with Scotland's traditional connections to France France (pronounced /ˈfrænts/ frantss or /ˈfrɑːnts/ frahnts; French pronunciation (help·info): [fʁɑ̃s]), officially the French Republic (French: République française, pronounced: [ʁepyblik fʁɑ̃sɛz]), is a state in Western Europe with several of its overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian,, then in the throes of the Enlightenment The Age of Enlightenment is the era in Western philosophy and intellectual, scientific and cultural life, centered upon the eighteenth century, in which reason was advocated as the primary source and legitimacy for authority, the Scots began developing a uniquely practical branch of humanism Humanism is an approach in study, philosophy, or practice that focuses on human values and concerns. The term has a complex history and is used to mean several things, most notably, an educational movement, associated especially with the Italian Renaissance, that emphasized the study of Greek and Roman literature, rhetoric, and moral philosophy – to the extent that Voltaire François-Marie Arouet , better known by the pen name Voltaire (pronounced: [volˈtɛʁ]), was a French Enlightenment writer and philosopher famous for his wit and for his advocacy of civil liberties, including freedom of religion and free trade. Voltaire was a prolific writer and produced works in almost every literary form including plays, said "We look to Scotland for all our ideas of civilisation"[3][4]

Empiricism and inductive reasoning

The first major philosopher of the Scottish Enlightenment was Francis Hutcheson,[5] 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"[5].

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 globalisation and tariffs.[6]

Scottish Enlightenment thinkers developed what Hume called a 'science of man'[7] 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.[5][8]

While the Scottish Enlightenment is traditionally considered to have concluded toward the end of the 18th century[7], 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. This tradition would also be shown in the later political leaders such as social democrats Keir Hardie and Ramsey MacDonald and many leaders of the Liberal Party and labour union leaders. Once again this would also repeat in The United States, Canada and New Zealand where a large number of social democrat and liberal political figures would be Scots.

An English visitor to Edinburgh during the heyday of the Scottish Enlightenment remarked: "Here I stand at what is called the Cross of Edinburgh, and can, in a few minutes, take 50 men of genius and learning by the hand". It is a striking summation of the outburst of pioneering intellectual activity that occurred in Scotland in the second half of the 18th century. They were a closely knit group: most knew one another; many were close friends; some were related by marriage. All were politically conservative but intellectually radical (Unionists and progressives to a man), courteous, friendly and accessible. They were stimulated by enormous curiosity, optimism about human progress and a dissatisfaction with age-old theological disputes. Together they created a cultural golden age.

– Magnus Magnusson, New Statesman[7]

Key figures

Plus two who visited and corresponded with Edinburgh scholars[8]:

The learned Scots were remarkably unlike the French philosophes; indeed, they were unlike any other group of philosophers that ever existed. In a gigantic study, “The Sociology of Philosophies,” published in 1998, Randall Collins assembled structural portraits of the seminal moments in philosophy, both Western and Eastern. Typically, the most important figures in a given cluster of thinkers (perhaps three or four men) would jockey for centrality while cultivating alliances with other thinkers or students on the margins. In the Scottish group, however, there was little of the bristling, charged, and exclusionary fervour of the Diderot-d’Alembert circle; or of the ruthless atmosphere found in Germany in the group that included Fichte, the Schelling brothers, and Hegel; or of the conscious glamour of the existentialists in postwar Paris. The Scots vigorously disagreed with one another, but they lacked the temperament for the high moral drama of quarrels, renunciations, and reconciliation. Hutcheson, Hume and Smith, along with Adam Ferguson and Thomas Reid, were all widely known, but none of them were remotely cult figures in the style of Hegel, Marx, Emerson, Wittgenstein, Sartre, or Foucault. To an astonishing degree, the men supported one another’s projects and publications, which they may have debated at a club that included amateurs (say, poetry-writing doctors, or lawyers with an interest in science) or in the fumy back room of some dark Edinburgh tavern. In all, the group seems rather like an erudite version of Dickens’s chattering and benevolent Pickwick Club.

– David Denby, The New Yorker[5]

See also

References

  1. ^ Herman, Arthur (2003). The Scottish Enlightenment: The Scots' Invention of the Modern World. 4th Estate, Limited. ISBN 1841152765.
  2. ^ Herman, Arthur (2001). How the Scots Invented the Modern World (Hardcover: ISBN 978-0609606353, Paperback: ISBN 978-0609809990 ed.). Crown Publishing Group.
  3. ^ José Manuel Barroso, 11th President of the European Commission (28 November 2006). "The Scottish enlightenment and the challenges for Europe in the 21st century; climate change and energy". Enlightenment Lecture Series, Edinburgh University. http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=SPEECH/06/756&format=HTML&aged=1&language=EN&guiLanguage=en. "I will try to show why Voltaire was right when he said: 'Nous nous tournons vers l’Écosse pour trouver toutes nos idées sur la civilisation' [we look to Scotland for all our ideas on civilisation]."
  4. ^ "Visiting The Royal Society of Edinburgh…". Royal Society of Edinburgh. First published in The Scotsman, Saturday 4 June 2005. http://www.royalsoced.org.uk/international/potocnik.htm. "Scotland has a proud heritage of science, research, invention and innovation, and can lay claim to some of the greatest minds and greatest discoveries since Voltaire wrote those words 250 years ago."
  5. ^ a b c d David Denby (11 October 2004). "Northern Lights: How modern life emerged from eighteenth-century Edinburgh". The New Yorker. Review of James Buchan's Crowded With Genius: Edinburgh's Moment of the Mind (Capital of the Mind: Edinburgh in the UK) HarperCollins, 2003. Hardcover: ISBN 0-06-055888-1, ISBN 978-0060558888. http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2004/10/11/041011crat_atlarge. "The fountainhead was Francis Hutcheson, a kind of pan-Enlightenment figure who, from 1729 until his death in 1746, held the chair in moral philosophy at the University of Glasgow, where he broke with tradition by lecturing in English in addition to the common lecturing language of the time, Latin. Hutcheson, a frequent visitor to Edinburgh, was Adam Smith’s teacher and he encouraged Hume’s early efforts. He was suspicious of metaphysics or any claims not based on observation or experience. Empiricism and the inductive method was the clarion call of the Scottish Enlightenment. The intellectual break with the past was drastic and seemingly irreversible. In recent years, scholars have traced the rudiments of modern psychology, anthropology, the earth sciences, and theories of civil society and liberal education to eighteenth-century Scotland."
  6. ^ Fry, Michael (1992). Adam Smith's Legacy: His Place in the Development of Modern Economics. Paul Samuelson, Lawrence Klein, Franco Modigliani, James M. Buchanan, Maurice Allais, Theodore Schultz, Richard Stone, James Tobin, Wassily Leontief, Jan Tinbergen. Routledge. ISBN 978-0415061643. "Adam Smith's Legacy brings together ten Nobel Laureates in Economics, the greatest number since the prize was instituted in 1969. They explore themes as diverse as Smith's use of data, his attitude towards human capital, and his views on economic policy. Heirs to Smith and leaders of the discipline, the contributors also reflect upon the current state of economics, assessing the extent to which it measures up to the benchmark established by its founder."
  7. ^ a b c d Magnus Magnusson (10 November 2003). "Northern lights". New Statesman. Review of James Buchan's Capital of the Mind: Edinburgh (Crowded With Genius: Edinburgh's Moment of the Mind in the U.S.) London: John Murray ISBN 0719554462. http://www.newstatesman.com/200311100040.
  8. ^ a b c Repcheck, Jack (2003). "Chapter 7: The Athens of the North" (in English). The Man Who Found Time: James Hutton and the Discovery of the Earth's Antiquity. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Basic Books, Perseus Books Group. pp. 117–143. ISBN 0-7382-0692-X. "Onto the list should also be added two men who never lived in Edinburgh but who visited and maintained an active correspondence with the scholars there: Ben Franklin (1706-1790), the statesman and talented polymath who discovered electricity; and Erasmus Darwin (1731-1802), Charles Darwin's grandfather and the author of a precursor theory of evolution."
  9. ^ a b Phillip Manning (28 December 2003). "A Toast To Times Past". Chapel Hill News. http://www.scibooks.org/manwhofoundtime.html. "Burns penned the song [Auld Lang Syne] in 1788 during the intellectual flowering known as the Scottish Enlightenment. Burns was part of a convivial group in Edinburgh whose writing and thinking produced the Enlightenment. One of the most original thinkers in that group, the man whose work would stimulate Charles Darwin’s ideas about evolution, was a well-to-do gentleman farmer named James Hutton. He discovered the immensity of our past, the days gone by that Burns wrote about so eloquently."
  10. ^ Cambridge University Press. "Andrew Fletcher: Political Works". http://www.cambridge.org/us/catalogue/catalogue.asp?isbn=9780521439947.
  11. ^ Dr David Allan. "A Hotbed of Genius: Culture and Society in the Scottish Enlightenment". University of St Andrews. http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/academic/history/scothist/hons/4111.shtml.

Further reading

· Whittles Publishing, 2009. Paperback: ISBN 1904445578.
· Edinburgh University Press, 1986. Hardcover: ISBN 0 85224 537 8.
· Saltire Society 1996. Paperback: ISBN 0-85411-069-0.
· Harper Perennial 2004. Paperback: ISBN 006055889X, ISBN 978-0060558895.
· Viking, 1999. Hardcover: ISBN 0670888117, ISBN 978-0670888115.
· Penguin, 2001. Paperback: ISBN 0141002344, ISBN 978-0141002347.
· Birlinn 2002. Paperback: ISBN 1-84158-151-8, ISBN 978-1841581514.
· Rowman & Littlefield, 2002. Hardcover: ISBN 0-7425-2280-6, ISBN 978-0742522800.
· Cambridge University Press, 2003. Hardcover: ISBN 0521802733, ISBN 9780521802734. Paperback: ISBN 0521003237, ISBN 978-0521003230.
· (Publisher?) 1996. Hardcover: ISBN 1559723564, ISBN 978-1559723565.
· Citadel, Kensington Books, 2000. Paperback: ISBN 0-8065-2060-4, ISBN 978-0806520605.
· Thomas Dunne Books, St. Martin's Press, 2004. Hardcover: ISBN 0-312-33876-7, ISBN 978-0312338763.
· Pimlico, Random House, 1992 (new edition). Paperback: ISBN 0-7126-9893-0, ISBN 978-0712698931.
· Edinburgh University Press, 1993. ISBN 978-0748604388.

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