Scottish

Enlightenment

David Hume and Adam Smith on the Scottish

National Portrait Gallery
The Scottish Enlightenment (Scots:
Scots Enlichtenment, Scottish Gaelic:
Soillseachadh na h-Alba) was the period
in 18th- and early-19th-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 four
universities. The Enlightenment culture
was based on close readings of new
books, 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
(St Andrews, Aberdeen, Glasgow, and
Edinburgh).[1][2]

Sharing the humanist and rationalist

outlook of the European Enlightenment
of the same time period, the thinkers of
the Scottish Enlightenment asserted the
importance of human reason combined
with a rejection of any authority 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 benefit for the individual
and society as a whole.
Among the fields that rapidly advanced
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 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 outside
Scotland, but also because its ideas and
attitudes were carried all over Europe and
across the Atlantic world as part of the
Scottish diaspora, and by European and
American students who studied in
Scotland.

Background
Union with England in 1707 meant the
end of the Scottish Parliament. The
parliamentarians, politicians, aristocrats,
and placemen moved to London.
Scottish law, however, remained entirely
separate from English law, so the civil
law courts, lawyers and jurists remained
in Edinburgh. The headquarters and
leadership of the Church of Scotland also
remained, as did the universities and the
medical establishment. The lawyers and
the divines, together with the professors,
intellectuals, medical men, scientists and
architects formed a new middle class
elite that dominated urban Scotland and
facilitated the Scottish
Enlightenment.[3][4]

Economic growth

At the union of 1707, England had about

five times the population of Scotland and
about 36 times as much wealth, but there
were four Scottish universities (St.
Andrews, Glasgow, Aberdeen and
Edinburgh) against two English. Scotland
experienced the beginnings of economic
expansion that allowed it to close this
gap.[5] Contacts with England led to a
conscious attempt to improve agriculture
among the gentry and nobility. Although
some estate holders improved the quality
of life of their displaced workers,
enclosures led to unemployment and
forced migrations to the burghs or
abroad.[6] The major change in
international trade was the rapid
expansion of the Americas as a
market.[7] Glasgow particularly benefited
from this new trade; initially supplying
the colonies with manufactured goods, it
emerged as the focus of the tobacco
trade, re-exporting particularly to France.
The merchants dealing in this lucrative
business became the wealthy tobacco
lords, who dominated the city for most of
the eighteenth century.[8] Banking also
developed in this period. The Bank of
Scotland, founded in 1695 was
suspected of Jacobite sympathies, and
so a rival Royal Bank of Scotland was
founded in 1727. Local banks began to
be established in burghs like Glasgow
and Ayr. These made capital available for
business, and the improvement of roads
and trade.[9]

Education system
The humanist-inspired emphasis on
education in Scotland culminated in the
passing of the Education Act 1496, which
decreed that all sons of barons and
freeholders of substance should attend
grammar schools.[10] The aims of a
network of parish schools were taken up
as part of the Protestant programme in
the 16th century and a series of acts of
the Privy Council and Parliament in 1616,
1633, 1646 and 1696 attempted to
support its development and finance.[11]
By the late 17th century there was a
largely complete network of parish
schools in the Lowlands, but in the
Highlands basic education was still
lacking in many areas.[12] One of the
effects of this extensive network of
schools was the growth of the
"democratic myth", which in the 19th
century created the widespread belief
that many a "lad of pairts" had been able
to rise up through the system to take
high office, and that literacy was much
more widespread in Scotland than in
neighbouring states, particularly
England.[12] Historians are now divided
over whether the ability of boys who
pursued this route to social advancement
was any different than that in other
comparable nations, because the
education in some parish schools was
basic and short, and attendance was not
compulsory.[13] Regardless of what the
literacy rate actually was, it is clear that
many Scottish students learned a useful
form of visual literacy that allowed them
to organise and remember information in
a superior fashion.[14][15]

By the 17th century, Scotland had five

universities, compared with England's
two. After the disruption of the civil wars,
Commonwealth and purges at the
Restoration, they recovered with a
lecture-based curriculum that was able to
embrace economics and science,
offering a high quality liberal education to
the sons of the nobility and gentry.[12] All
saw the establishment or re-
establishment of chairs of mathematics.
Observatories were built at St. Andrews
and at King's and Marischal colleges in
Aberdeen. Robert Sibbald (1641-1722)
was appointed as the first Professor of
Medicine at Edinburgh, and he co-
founded the Royal College of Physicians
of Edinburgh in 1681.[16] These
developments helped the universities to
become major centres of medical
education and would put Scotland at the
forefront of new thinking.[12] By the end
of the century, the University of
Edinburgh's Medical School was arguably
one of the leading centres of science in
Europe, boasting such names as the
anatomist Alexander Monro (secundus),
the chemists William Cullen and Joseph
Black,[17] and the natural historian John
Walker.[18] By the 18th century, access to
Scottish universities was probably more
open than in contemporary England,
Germany or France. Attendance was less
expensive and the student body more
socially representative.[19] In the
eighteenth century Scotland reaped the
intellectual benefits of this system.[20]

Intellectual climate

In France, the Enlightenment was based

in the salons and culminated in the great
Encyclopédie (1751-72) edited by Denis
Diderot and (until 1759) Jean le Rond
d'Alembert (1713-84) with contributions
by hundreds of leading intellectuals such
as Voltaire (1694-1778), Rousseau
(1712-78) [21] and Montesquieu (1689-
1755). Some 25,000 copies of the 35-
volume set were sold, half of them
outside France. In Scottish intellectual
life the culture was oriented towards
books.[22] In 1763 Edinburgh had six
printing houses and three paper mills; by
1783 there were 16 printing houses and
12 paper mills.[23]

Intellectual life revolved around a series

of clubs, beginning in Edinburgh in the
1710s. One of the first was the Easy
Club, co-founded In Edinburgh by the
Jacobite printer Thomas Ruddiman.
Clubs did not reach Glasgow until the
1740s. One of the first and most
important in the city was the Political
Economy Club, aimed at creating links
between academics and merchants,[24]
of which noted economist Adam Smith
was a prominent early member.[25] Other
clubs in Edinburgh included The Select
Society, formed by the younger Allan
Ramsay, a prominent artist, and
philosophers David Hume and Adam
Smith[26] and, later, The Poker Club,
formed in 1762 and named by Adam
Ferguson for the aim to "poke up" opinion
on the militia issue.[27]
Historian Jonathan Israel argues that by
1750 Scotland's major cities had created
an intellectual infrastructure of mutually
supporting institutions, such as
universities, reading societies, libraries,
periodicals, museums and masonic
lodges. The Scottish network was
"predominantly liberal Calvinist,
Newtonian, and 'design' oriented in
character which played a major role in
the further development of the
transatlantic Enlightenment".[20][28] Bruce
Lenman says their "central achievement
was a new capacity to recognize and
interpret social patterns."[29]

Major intellectual areas

Empiricism and inductive
reasoning

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The first 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 link between the ideas of
Shaftesbury and the later school of
Scottish Common Sense Realism,
developing Utilitarianism and
Consequentialist thinking.[30] Also
influenced by Shaftesbury was George
Turnbull (1698-1748), who was regent at
Marischal College, Aberdeen, and who
published pioneering work in the fields of
Christian ethics, art and education.[31]

David Hume (1711-76) whose Treatise

on Human Nature (1738) and Essays,
Moral and Political (1741) helped outline
the parameters of philosophical
Empiricism and Scepticism.[30] He would
be a major influence on later
Enlightenment figures including Adam
Smith, Immanuel Kant and Jeremy
Bentham.[32] Hume's argument that there
were no efficient causes hidden in nature
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.[33]

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.[34] Reid set out
his theories in An Inquiry into the Human
Mind on the Principles of Common Sense
(1764).[35] This approach argued that
there are certain concepts, such as
human existence, the existence of solid
objects and some basic moral "first
principles", that are intrinsic to the make
up of man and from which all
subsequent arguments and systems of
morality must be derived. It can be seen
as an attempt to reconcile the new
scientific developments of the
Enlightenment with religious belief.[36]

Literature

Major literary figures originating in

Scotland in this period included 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 source
on one of the English Enlightenment's
major men of letters and his circle.[37]
Allan Ramsay (1686-1758) laid the
foundations of a reawakening of interest
in older Scottish literature, as well as
leading the trend for pastoral poetry,
helping to develop the Habbie stanza as
a poetic form.[38] The lawyer Henry
Home, Lord Kames (1696-1782) made a
major contribution to the study of
literature with Elements of Criticism
(1762), which became the standard
textbook on rhetoric and style.[39]

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 produced
an edition of the works of Shakespeare
and is best known 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 theory on
the relationship between cognition and
the origins of language.[40] It influenced
many leading thinkers of the Scottish
Enlightenment, including Adam Smith
and Dugald Stewart.

Blair was one of the figures who first

drew attention to the Ossian cycle of
James Macpherson to public
attention.[41] Macpherson (1736-96) was
the first Scottish poet to gain an
international reputation. Claiming to have
found poetry written by the ancient bard
Ossian, he published "translations" that
were proclaimed as a Celtic equivalent of
the Classical epics. Final, written 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 especially in German literature,
through its influence on Johann Gottfried
von Herder and Johann Wolfgang von
Goethe.[42] 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.[43]

Before Robert Burns (1759-96) the most

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
known poem "Auld Reekie" (1773).[44]
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
making original compositions, Burns also
collected folk songs from across
Scotland, often revising or adapting
them.[45] Burns's poetry drew upon a
substantial familiarity with and
knowledge of Classical, Biblical, and
English literature, as well as the Scottish
Makar tradition.[46]

Economics

Adam Smith developed and published

The Wealth of Nations, the starting point
of modern economics.[47] This study,
which had an immediate impact on
British economic policy, still frames
discussions on globalisation and
tariffs.[48] The book identified land,
labour, and capital as the three factors of
production and the major contributors to
a nation's wealth, as distinct from the
Physiocratic idea that only agriculture
was productive. Smith discussed
potential benefits of specialization by
division of labour, including increased
labour productivity and gains from trade,
whether between town and country or
across countries.[49] 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."[50] In
an argument that includes "one of the
most famous passages in all
economics,"[51] Smith represents every
individual as trying to employ any capital
they might command for their own
advantage, not that of the society,[52] and
for the sake of profit, which is necessary
at some level for employing capital in
domestic industry, and positively related
to the value of produce.[53] Economists
have linked Smith's invisible-hand
concept to his concern for the common
man and woman through economic
growth and development,[54] enabling
higher levels of consumption, which
Smith describes as "the sole end and
purpose of all production."[55][56]

Sociology and anthropology

Scottish Enlightenment thinkers
developed what leading thinkers such as
James Burnett, Lord Monboddo (1714-
99) and Lord Kames called a science of
man,[57] 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 determining forces of modernity.
Modern notions of visual anthropology
permeated the lectures of leading
Scottish academics like Hugh Blair,[58]
and Alan Swingewood argues that
modern sociology largely originated in
Scotland.[59] Lord Monboddo 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.[60] 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.[61]

Mathematics, science and

medicine

One of the central pillars of the Scottish

Enlightenment 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.[62] 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.[63]

Colin Maclaurin (1698-1746) was

appointed as chair of mathematics by
the age of 19 at Marischal College, and
was the leading British mathematician of
his era.[30] Mathematician and physicist
Sir John Leslie (1766-1832) is chiefly
noted for his experiments with heat and
was the first person to artificially create
ice.[64]

Other major figures in science included

William Cullen (1710-90), physician and
chemist, James Anderson (1739-1808),
agronomist. Joseph Black (1728-99),
physicist and chemist, discovered carbon
dioxide (fixed air) and latent heat,[65] and
developed what many consider to be the
first chemical formulae.[66]

James Hutton (1726-97) was the first

modern geologist, with his Theory of the
Earth (1795) challenging existing ideas
about the age of the earth.[67][68] His
ideas were popularised by the scientist
and mathematician John Playfair (1748-
1819).[69] Prior to James Hutton, Rev.
David Ure then minister to East Kilbride
Parish was the first to represent the
shells 'entrochi' in illustrations and make
accounts of the geology of southern
Scotland. The findings of David Ure were
influential enough to inspire the Scottish
endeavour to the recording and
interpretation of natural history and
Fossils, a major part of the Scottish
Enlightenment.[70][71]

Edinburgh became a major centre of

medical teaching and research.[72]

Significance
Representative of the far-reaching impact
of the Scottish Enlightenment was the
new Encyclopædia Britannica, which was
designed in Edinburgh by Colin
Macfarquhar, Andrew Bell and others. It
was first published in three volumes
between 1768 and 1771, with 2,659
pages and 160 engravings, and quickly
became a standard reference work in the
English-speaking world. The fourth
edition (1810) ran to 16,000 pages in 20
volumes. The Encyclopaedia continued to
be published in Edinburgh until 1898,
when it was sold to an American
publisher.[73]

Cultural influence

The Scottish Enlightenment had

numerous dimensions, influencing the
culture of the nation in several areas
including architecture, art and music.[74]
Scotland produced some of the most
significant architects of the period who
were involved in the intellectual culture of
the Enlightenment. Robert Adam (1728-
92) was an interior designer as well as an
architect, with his brothers developing
the Adam style,[75] He influenced the
development of architecture in Britain,
Western Europe, North America and in
Russia.[76][77] Adam's main rival was
William Chambers, another Scot, but
born in Sweden.[78] Chambers was
appointed architectural tutor to the
Prince of Wales, later George III, and in
1766, with Robert Adam, as Architect to
the King.[79][80]
Artists included John Alexander and his
younger contemporary William Mossman
(1700-71). They painted many of the
figures of early-Enlightenment
Edinburgh.[81] The leading Scottish artist
of the late eighteenth century, Allan
Ramsay, studied in Sweden, London and
Italy before basing himself in Edinburgh,
where he established himself as a
leading portrait painter to the Scottish
nobility and he undertook portraits of
many of the major figures of the Scottish
Enlightenment, including his friend the
philosopher David Hume and the visiting
Jean-Jacques Rousseau.[82] Gavin
Hamilton (1723-98) spent almost his
entire career in Italy and emerged as a
pioneering neo-classical painter of
historical and mythical themes, including
his depictions of scenes from Homer's
Iliad, as well as acting as an informal
tutor to British artists and as an early
archaeologist and antiquarian.[83] Many
of his works can be seen as
Enlightenment speculations about the
origins of society and politics, including
the Death of Lucretia (1768), an event
thought to be critical to the birth of the
Roman Republic. His classicism would
be a major influence on French artist
Jacques-Louis David (1748-1825).[84]

The growth of a musical culture in the

capital was marked by the incorporation
of the Musical Society of Edinburgh in
1728.[85] Scottish composers known to
be active in this period include:
Alexander Munro (fl. c. 1732), James
Foulis (1710-73) and Charles McLean
(fl. c. 1737).[86] Thomas Erskine, 6th Earl
of Kellie (1732-81) was one of the most
important British composers of his era,
and the first Scot known to have
produced a symphony.[87] In the mid-
eighteenth century, a group of Scottish
composers began to respond to Allan
Ramsey's call to "own and refine" their
own musical tradition, creating what
James Johnson has characterised as the
"Scots drawing room style", taking
primarily Lowland Scottish tunes and
adding simple figured basslines and
other features from Italian music that
made them acceptable to a middle-class
audience. It gained momentum when
major Scottish composers like James
Oswald (1710-69) and William
McGibbon (1690-1756) became
involved around 1740. Oswald's Curious
Collection of Scottish Songs (1740) was
one of the first to include Gaelic tunes
alongside Lowland ones, setting a
fashion common by the middle of the
century and helping to create a unified
Scottish musical identity. However, with
changing fashions there was a decline in
the publication of collections of
specifically Scottish collections of tunes,
in favour of their incorporation into
British collections.[88]

Wider impact

While the Scottish Enlightenment is

traditionally considered to have
concluded toward the end of the 18th
century,[57] disproportionately large
Scottish contributions to British science
and letters continued for another 50
years or more, thanks to such figures as
Thomas Carlyle, James Watt, William
Murdoch, James Clerk Maxwell, Lord
Kelvin and Sir Walter Scott.[89] The
influence of the movement spread
beyond Scotland across the British
Empire, and onto the Continent. The
political ideas had an important impact
on the founding fathers of the US, which
broke away from the empire in
1775.[90][91][92] The philosophy of
Common Sense Realism was especially
influential in 19th century American
thought and religion.[93]

Cultural representations

The Scottish dramatist Robert McLellan

(1907-1985) wrote a number of full-
length stage comedies which give a self-
conscious representation of Edinburgh at
the height of the Scottish enlightenment,
most notably The Flouers o Edinburgh
(1957). These plays include references to
many of the figures historically
associated with the movement and
satirise various social tensions,
particularly in the field of spoken
language, between traditional society
and anglicised Scots who presented
themselves as exponents of so-called
'new manners'. Other later examples
include Young Auchinleck (1962), a stage
portrait of the young James Boswell, and
The Hypocrite (1967) which draws
attention to conservative religious
reaction in the country that threatened to
check enlightenment trends. McLellan's
picture of these tensions in national