The Scottish Enlightenment (Scots: Scots Enlichtenment, Scottish Gaelic: Soilleireachadh na h-Alba) was the period in 18th century Scotland characterised by an outpouring of intellectual and scientific accomplishments. By the eighteenth century, Scotland had a network of parish schools in the Lowlands and five universities. The culture was oriented toward books,[1] and intense discussions took place daily at such intellectual gathering places in Edinburgh as The Select Society and, later, The Poker Club as well as within Scotland’s ancient universities such as St Andrews, Glasgow, Edinburgh and Aberdeen.
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 that could not be justified by reason. They held to an optimistic belief in the ability of humanity to effect changes for the better in society and nature, guided only by reason. This latter feature 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 improvement, virtue, and practical benefit for the individual and society as a whole.
Among the fields that rapidly advanced were philosophy, political economy, engineering, architecture, medicine, geology, archaeology, law, agriculture, chemistry and sociology. Among the Scottish thinkers and scientists of the period were Francis Hutcheson, David Hume, Adam Smith, Dugald Stewart, Thomas Reid, Robert Burns, Adam Ferguson, John Playfair, Joseph Black and James Hutton.
The Scottish Enlightenment had effects far beyond Scotland, not only because of the esteem in which Scottish achievements were held outwith Scotland, but also because its ideas and attitudes were carried across the Atlantic world as part of the Scottish diaspora, and by American students who studied in Scotland.
Key figures[edit]
- Robert Adam (1728–92) 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), philosopher
- James Burnett, Lord Monboddo (1714–1799) judge, founder of modern comparative historical linguistics
- Robert Burns[86] (1759–96) poet
- George Campbell (1719–1796) philosopher
- Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881), historian
- Sir John Clerk of Eldin (1728–1812) artist, navalist
- William Cullen (1710–1790) physician, chemist, medical research
- Adam Ferguson (1723–1816) considered the founder of sociology
- Robert Fergusson (1750–1774), poet.
- Andrew Fletcher (1653–1716) a forerunner of the Scottish Enlightenment,[87] writer, patriot, commissioner of Parliament of Scotland
- Sir 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
- James Hutton[61][86] (1726–1797) founder of modern geology
- Sir John Leslie (1766–1832) mathematician, physicist
- James Mill (1773–1836) philosopher;
- John Millar (1735–1801) philosopher, historian
- Thomas Muir of Huntershill, (1765–1799), political reformer
- John Playfair (1748–1819) mathematician, geologist
- Allan Ramsay[88] (1686–1758) poet
- Henry Raeburn[52] (1756–1823) portrait painter
- Thomas Reid (1710–1796) philosopher, founder of the Scottish School of Common Sense
- William Robertson (1721–1793) historian
- Sir Walter Scott (1771–1832) novelist, poet
- John Sinclair (1754–1835) writer
- William Smellie (1740–1795) editor of the first edition of Encyclopædia Britannica
- Adam Smith (1723–1790) economics
- Dugald Stewart (1753–1828) philosopher
- George Turnbull (1698–1748), theologian, philosopher and writer on education
- John Walker (naturalist) (1730–1803) natural history
- James Watt (1736–1819) inventor of steam engine
Plus two who visited and corresponded with Edinburgh scholars:[61]
- Erasmus Darwin (1731–1802) English physician, botanist, philosopher, grandfather of Charles Darwin
- Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790), polymath, one of the Founding Fathers of the United States[89]
See also[edit]
Deism[edit]
Both the Moderate Enlightenment and a Radical or Revolutionary Enlightenment were reactions against the authoritarianism, irrationality, and obscurantism of the established churches. Philosophers such as Voltaire depicted organized Christianity as a tool of tyrants and oppressors and as being used to defend monarchism, it was seen as hostile to the development of reason and the progress of science and incapable of verification.
An alternative religion was deism, the philosophical belief in a deity based on reason, rather than religious revelation or dogma. It was a popular perception among the philosophes, who adopted deistic attitudes to varying degrees. Deism greatly influenced the thought of intellectuals and Founding Fathers, including John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, perhaps George Washington and, especially, Thomas Jefferson.[26] The most articulate exponent was Thomas Paine, whose The Age of Reason was written in France in the early 1790s, and soon reached the United States. Paine was highly controversial; when Jefferson was attacked for his deism in the 1800 election, Republican politicians took pains to distance their candidate from Paine.[27]