Everything about The Scottish Enlightenment totally explained
The
Scottish Enlightenment was a remarkable period in
18th century Scotland characterized by a great outpouring of intellectual and scientific accomplishments rivalling that of any other nation at any time in history. What made it even more remarkable was that it took place in a country with a substantially smaller population base and infrastructure than many other major western European nations at the time. However, the fact is that by 1750, Scots were amongst the most literate nations of Europe, with an estimated 75% level of literacy.
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 couldn't 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, 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.
After 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 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."
Empiricism and inductive reasoning
The first major philosopher of the Scottish Enlightenment was
Francis Hutcheson, 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."
Scottish Enlightenment thinkers developed what Hume called a "science of man" 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.
While the Scottish Enlightenment is traditionally considered to have concluded toward the end of the
18th century, (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, 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 (1686 - 1758) poet
Henry RaeburnThe 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 [[Denis Diderot |
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