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Title: The Scottish Enlightenment
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Published: Feb 13, 2009
Author: Wikipedia
Post Date: 2009-02-13 18:52:40 by Turtle
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Views: 142
Comments: 9
The Scottish Enlightenment was the period in 18th century Scotland characterised by an outpouring of intellectual and scientific accomplishments. By 1750, Scots were amongst the most literate nations of Europe, with an estimated 75% level of literacy.[1] Sharing the humanist and rationalist outlook of the European Enlightenment of the same time period, the thinkers of the Scottish Enlightenment asserted the fundamental importance of human reason combined with a rejection of any authority which could not be justified by reason. They held to an optimistic belief in the ability of man to effect changes for the better in society and nature, 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 and practicality where the chief virtues were held to be improvement, virtue, and practical benefit for both the individual and society as a whole. Among the advances of the period were achievements in philosophy, economics, engineering, architecture, medicine, geology, archaeology, law, agriculture, chemistry, and sociology. Among the outstanding Scottish thinkers and scientists of the period were Francis Hutcheson, David Hume, Adam Smith, Thomas Reid, Robert Burns, Adam Ferguson, John Playfair, Joseph Black and James Hutton. 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 as part of the Scottish diaspora which had its beginnings in that same era. In the period following the Act of Union 1707 Scotland's place in the world was 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[2] 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"[3][4]. 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]. Hume stands out from the mainstream enlightenment due to his deep pessimism which is largely not shared by other humanist thinkers[citation needed]. 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], 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. 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 in 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[9] (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) considered the founder of sociology * Andrew Fletcher (1653-1716) a forerunner of the Scottish Enlightenment,[10] writer, patriot, commissioner of Parliament of Scotland * 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[9][8] (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[11] (1686 - 1758) poet * Henry Raeburn[7] (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 * George Turnbull (1698-1748), theologian, philosopher and writer on education * John Walker (naturalist) (1730-1803) professor of natural history * James Watt (1736-1819) student of Joseph Black; engineer, inventor (see Watt steam engine) Plus two who visited and corresponded with Edinburgh scholars[8]: * Erasmus Darwin (1731-1802) physician, botanist, philosopher, grandfather of Charles Darwin * Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) polymath, one of the Founding Fathers of the United States 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]
Poster Comment: Turtle's last name is Scottish, although he is more descended from drunken crazy Scots-Irish killers. Still, it's amazing that Edinburgh, which at that time had 40,000 people, was able to produce these kind of people. What these people thought became the basis of the Constiution and the Declaration of Independence. Turtle wonders how this happened.
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#1. To: Turtle (#0)
The whole history of the world would be different (and better) if it was ruled by clear-minded thinkers instead of "cult figures" and their crazed disciples. That's one reason I wish that libertarians would read less Rand and more Hume.
Did you hear that they have recently discovered a new use for Sheep in Scotland? Wool.
""I think the subject which will be of most importance politically is Mass Psychology...It's importance has been enormously increased by the growth of modern methods of propaganda...Although this science will be diligently studied, it will be rigidly confined to the governing class. The populace will not be allowed to know how its convictions were generated." Bertrand Russel, Eugenicist and Logician
Rand was a crazed Jewess than only fools fall for (I call her writings the Talmud Lite for Stupid Gentiles). It's too bad most people have never even heard of the Scottish Enlightenment, in spite of the fact without it this country would not have been founded on the ideas that it was.
Second that.
Erectus Walks Amongst Us It is an interesting historical sidelight that Lyell won the argument with Cuvier of France and established Uniformitarianism as the dominant Geologic paradigm, but that modern research is beginning to vindicate Cuvier who was the leading proponent of Catastrophism. Of course Cuvier's viewpoint was to no small degree influenced by his religious beliefs but then so was Lyell's by rejection of them. Nevertheless, the geologic history of this planet, rather than a long slow uniform change (Uniformitarianism) is now increasingly seen as being punctuated by events wherein there were massive global changes in a relatively short period of time (Catastrophism). One example is the rapid and massive changes that brought the Dinosaurs to extinction. This does not take away from Lyell's other work, but simply interjected to show that the winner of argument, in science, is not always the correct position.
""I think the subject which will be of most importance politically is Mass Psychology...It's importance has been enormously increased by the growth of modern methods of propaganda...Although this science will be diligently studied, it will be rigidly confined to the governing class. The populace will not be allowed to know how its convictions were generated." Bertrand Russel, Eugenicist and Logician
Turtle wonders how this happened There is something to genes after all. As if we didn't already know.
Law Enforcement Against Prohibition You think the people of this country exist to provide you with position. I think your position exists to provide those people with freedom.~~William Wallace ALAS, BABYLON
This article forgot a very important Scot: Admiral Sir Thomas Cochrane, 10th Earl of Dundonald, Marques do Maranhão, GCB RN (14 December 1775 – 31 October 1860), styled Lord Cochrane between 1778 and 1831[1], was a British naval officer and radical politician. He was one of the most daring and successful captains of the Napoleonic Wars, leading the French to nickname him "le loup des mers" ("the sea wolf"). After being dismissed from the Royal Navy, he served in the rebel navies of Chile, Brazil, and Greece during their respective wars of independence, before being reinstated in the Royal Navy with the rank of Rear Admiral of the Blue. Subsequently promoted several times, he died in 1860 with the rank of Admiral of the Red, and the honorary title of Rear-Admiral of the United Kingdom. His life and exploits served as inspiration for the naval fiction of twentieth-century novelists C. S. Forester's Horatio Hornblower and Patrick O'Brian's Jack Aubrey. ------------------------------------- You may say, Him and I are related ;-)
Turtle wonders how this happened. BBC has two great series, on the Clans.. one for the Highlanders and another an overall view, of certain clans.. (mostly Lowlanders like my self)
Sign up and add that to Wikipedia. Anyone can edit an article. Turtle is descended from Highlanders, like in the movie, "Highlander." And he's got a big sword, too!
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.
#2. To: Turtle (#0)
#3. To: Rupert_Pupkin (#1)
No place is better than Turtle Island.
#4. To: Rupert_Pupkin (#1)
That's one reason I wish that libertarians would read less Rand and more Hume.
I will not go to Auschwitz. I have ordered the book. Da-do-run-run-run Da-do-run-run.
#5. To: Turtle (#0)
#6. To: Turtle (#0)
Still, it's amazing that Edinburgh, which at that time had 40,000 people, was able to produce these kind of people. What these people thought became the basis of the Constiution and the Declaration of Independence.
"Corporation: An entity created for the legal protection of its human parasites, whose sole purpose is profit and self-perpetuation." ~~ IndieTx
#7. To: Turtle (#0)
#8. To: Turtle (#0)
Still, it's amazing that Edinburgh, which at that time had 40,000 people, was able to produce these kind of people. What these people thought became the basis of the Constiution and the Declaration of Independence.
#9. To: Refinersfire (#7)
No place is better than Turtle Island.
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