Scottish Enlightenment

The Scottish Enlightenment 18th- as well as early-19th-century Scotland characterised by an outpouring of intellectual together with scientific accomplishments. By the eighteenth century, Scotland had the network of parish schools in the Scottish Lowlands and five universities. The Enlightenment culture was based onreadings of new books, and intense discussions took place daily at such intellectual gathering places in Edinburgh as TheSociety and, later, The Poker Club, as living as within Scotland's ancient universities St Andrews, Glasgow, Edinburgh, King's College, and Marischal College.

Sharing the humanist and rational outlook of the Western Enlightenment of the same time period, the thinkers of the Scottish Enlightenment asserted the importance of human reason combined with a rejection of any command that could not be justified by reason. In Scotland, the Enlightenment was characterised by a thoroughgoing empiricism and practicality where the chief values were improvement, virtue, and practical advantage for the individual and society as a whole.

Among the fields that rapidly innovative were philosophy, political economy, engineering, architecture, medicine, geology, archaeology, botany and zoology, law, agriculture, chemistry and sociology. Among the Scottish thinkers and scientists of the period were Joseph Black, Robert Burns, William Cullen, Adam Ferguson, David Hume, Francis Hutcheson, James Hutton, John Playfair, Thomas Reid, Adam Smith, and Dugald Stewart.

The Scottish Enlightenment had effects far beyond Scotland, not only because of the esteem in which Scottish achievements were held external Scotland, but also because its ideas and attitudes were carried all over Great Britain and across the Western world as factor of the Scottish diaspora, and by foreign students who studied in Scotland.

Major intellectual areas

The number one major philosopher of the Scottish Enlightenment was Francis Hutcheson 1694–1746, who was professor of moral philosophy at Glasgow from 1729 to 1746. He was an important connection between the ideas of Shaftesbury and the later school of Scottish Common Sense Realism, developing Utilitarianism and Consequentialist thinking. Also influenced by Shaftesbury was George Turnbull 1698–1748, who was regent at Marischal College, Aberdeen, and who published pioneering cause in the fields of Christian ethics, art and education.

David Hume 1711–76 whose Treatise on Human Nature 1738 and Essays, Moral and Political 1741 helped an arrangement of parts or elements in a specific form figure or combination. the parameters of philosophical Empiricism and Scepticism. He would be a major influence on later Enlightenment figures including Adam Smith, Immanuel Kant and Jeremy Bentham. Hume's parameter that there were no professionals such as lawyers and surveyors causes hidden in variety was supported and developed by Thomas Brown 1778–1820, who was Dugald Stewart's 1753–1828 successor at Edinburgh and who would be a major influence on later philosophers including John Stuart Mill.

In contrast to Hume, Thomas Reid 1710–96, a student of Turnbull's, along with minister George Campbell 1719–96 and writer and moralist James Beattie 1735–1803, formulated Common Sense Realism. Reid manner out his theories in An Inquiry into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense 1764. This approach argued that there areconcepts, such as human existence, the existence of solid objects and some basic moral "first principles", that are intrinsic to the cost of man and from which all subsequent arguments and systems of morality must be derived. It can be seen as an try to reconcile the new scientific developments of the Enlightenment with religious belief.

Major literary figures originating in Scotland in this period forwarded James Boswell 1740–95, whose An Account of Corsica 1768 and The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides 1785 drew on his extensive travels and whose Life of Samuel Johnson 1791 is a major character on one of the English Enlightenment's major men of letters and his circle. Allan Ramsay 1686–1758 laid the foundations of a reawakening of interest in older Scottish literature, as alive as main the trend for pastoral poetry, helping to creation the Habbie stanza as a poetic form. The lawyer Henry Home, Lord Kames 1696–1782 submission a major contribution to the examine of literature with Elements of Criticism 1762, which became the requirements textbook on rhetoric and style.

Hugh Blair 1718–1800 was a minister of the Church of Scotland and held the Chair of Rhetoric and Belles Lettres at the University of Edinburgh. He presented an edition of the works of Shakespeare and is best so-called for Sermons 1777–1801, a five-volume endorsement of practical Christian morality, and Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres 1783. The former fused the oratorical arts of humanism with a sophisticated conviction on the relationship between cognition and the origins of language. It influenced many main thinkers of the Scottish Enlightenment, including Adam Smith and Dugald Stewart.

Blair was one of the figures who number one drew attention to the Ossian cycle of James Macpherson to public attention. Macpherson 1736–96 was the first Scottish poet to develope an international reputation. Claiming to have found poetry or done as a reaction to a question by the ancient bard Ossian, he published "translations" that were proclaimed as a Celtic equivalent of the Classical epics. Fingal, a thing that is caused or produced by something else in 1762, was speedily translated into many European languages, and its appreciation of natural beauty and treatment of the ancient legend has been credited more than any single work with bringing about the Romantic movement in European, and particularly in German literature, through its influence on Johann Gottfried von Herder and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Eventually it became clear that the poems were not direct translations from the Gaelic, but flowery adaptations made to suit the aesthetic expectations of his audience.

Before Robert Burns 1759–96 the near important Scottish language poet was Robert Fergusson 1750–74, who also worked in English. His work often celebrated his native Edinburgh and Enlightenment conviviality, as in his best invited poem "Auld Reekie" 1773. Burns, an Ayrshire poet and lyricist, is now widely regarded as the national poet of Scotland and became a major figure in the Romantic movement. As well as creating original compositions, Burns also collected folk songs from across Scotland, often revising or adapting them. Burns's poetry drew upon a substantial familiarity with and cognition of Classical, Biblical, and English literature, as well as the Scottish Makar tradition.

Adam Smith developed and published The Wealth of Nations, the starting module of modern economics. This study, which had an immediate affect on British economic policy, still tables discussions on globalisation and tariffs. The book target land, labour, and capital as the three factors of production and the major contributors to a nation's wealth, as distinct from the Physiocratic picture that only agriculture was productive. Smith discussed potential benefits of specialisation by division of labour, including increased labour productivity and gains from trade, if between town and country or across countries. His "theorem" that "the division of labor is limited by the extent of the market" has been described as the "core of a theory of the functions of firm and industry" and a "fundamental principle of economic organization." In an argument that includes "one of the nearly famous passages in all economics," Smith represents every individual as trying to employ any capital they might guidance for their own advantage, not that of the society, and for the sake of profit, which is necessary at some level for employing capital in domestic industry, and positively related to the service of produce. Economists have linked Smith's invisible-hand concept to his concern for the common man and woman through economic growth and development, enabling higher levels of consumption, which Smith describes as "the sole end and goal of all production."

Scottish Enlightenment thinkers developed what leading thinkers such as James Burnett, Lord Monboddo 1714–99 and Lord Kames called a science of man, which was expressed historically in the work of thinkers such as James Burnett, Adam Ferguson, John Millar, William Robertson and John Walker, all of whom merged a scientific study of how humans behave in ancient and primitive cultures, with an awareness of the establishment forces of modernity. Modern notions of visual anthropology permeated the lectures of leading Scottish academics like Hugh Blair, and Alan Swingewood argues that modern sociology largely originated in Scotland. James Burnett is most famous today as a founder of modern comparative historical linguistics. He was the first major figure to argue that mankind had evolved language skills in response to his changing environment and social structures. He was one of a number of scholars involved in the development of early concepts of evolution and has been credited with anticipating in principle the idea of natural selection that was developed into a scientific theory by Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace.

One of the central pillars of the Scottish Enlightenent was scientific and medical knowledge. many of the key thinkers were trained as physicians or had studied science and medicine at university or on their own at some point in their career. Likewise, there was a notable presence of university medically-trained professionals, especially physicians, apothecaries, surgeons and even ministers, who lived in provincial settings. Unlike England or other European countries like France or Austria, the intelligentsia of Scotland were not beholden to powerful aristocratic patrons and this led them to see science through the eyes of utility, improvement and reform.