The Scottish Enlightenment

If you are traveling to England, get out of London if possible. While there are many sights there worth seeing, much was bombed out during World War II and post-war sprawl spreads out as far as the eye can see. Once outside of the tourist strip along the Thames, it is rather ordinary.

The truly great city of the Britain is Edinburgh. It owes much of its glory to the Scottish Enlightenment, an intellectual movement that changed the world. During the 1700s the last Jacobite rebellions against the English crown ended in bitter defeat. Scotland was small, subjugated by its more powerful neighbor, and the poorest country in Western Europe. Prospects were bleak yet against all expectations, there arose a torrent of creativity, thought, and inventiveness.

Adam Smith laid the foundations for modern capitalism with his Wealth of Nations, while David Hume also wrote about the nature of wealth and established modern secular thought. Joseph Black and James Watt made improvements to the early steam engine that were later critical in bringing about the industrial revolution. Literature flourished with writers such as Robert Burns(a poet with his very own holiday) and Sir Walter Scott(Rob Roy, Ivanhoe).

The Scots founded the first public school system since antiquity and soon had one of the highest rates of literacy in Europe. Entirely new fields in science were founded such as thermochemistry, sociology, and geology.

Above all, the Scottish enlightenment was defined by a drive to define the world in rational terms. For instance, the lay of the land and the properties of the Earth had previously been seen as the product of biblical creation. This began to change when James Hutton began observing rock type, formation, and layers. Geology resulted when he realized that he was looking into millions of years of natural history...

This sort of thinking did much to further the development of modern science, philosophy, and engineering in the coming centuries.

In Edinburgh's 'New' Town, there is an entire district of the city in that was built during the Scottish Enlightenment with a distinct and easily identifiable architecture. With the dramatic view from Edinburgh's high hilltops, one can see an entire swath that was instilled with the vigorous spirit of those times. The city as a whole is among the prettiest in Europe yet is not at all huge. It is compact and elegant without much sprawl. The modest size of this town allowed an unexpected generation of super geniuses to be personally acquainted with one another. They were able to discuss and debate at the local bar just like regular buddies. The result of this close association was an unusual ideological unity and coherency. It is not easy to attribute some of the Scottish Enlightenment's greatest accomplishments to just one person because these great Scots collaborated so frequently.

In the day of the Scottish Enlightenment, the established economic view was mercantilism, the belief that wealth is gold and silver. Monarchs adopted interventionist policies and trade restrictions to maximize royal stores of bullion. David Hume, however, believed that money is only a means to allow fluid exchange of goods and services, which are the real wealth. Adam Smith, Hume's good friend, agreed with this premise and expanded on it by postulating that an economy would function better with natural laws of individual incentive and competition than with monarchical intervention.

Perhaps the Scots learned something important from their own success story. Although small, poor, and conquered, they found that acting according to rationally constructed principles could quickly change their situation. Perhaps they realized that with the right way of thinking, the right kind of ideas follow. Indeed, it could not be said the Scottish enlightenment ever truly came to an end. Scotland continued to produce world famous scientists, authors(heard of Robert Louis Stevenson?), industrialists, and philosophers. From the original outpouring of innovation, Scottish brilliance spread across the world. Andrew Carnegie and Alexander Graham Bell were among the particularly notable exports in the subsequent 'Scottish invasion.' As well as these later individuals are known, not as much attention is given to the boom that started it all. There is something mysterious about the unexpected rise of Scotland. 'Where did it come from?' is a question that not even scholars can easily answer.