Page 100 - BBC History The Story of Science & Technology - 2017 UK

People & Personalities / Scottish Enlightenment

Professor Alexander
Broadie on the balcony
HISTORYEXPLORER of Glasgow’s Hunterian
Museum. Broadie held the
same university position as
Scotland’s “giant of moral
philosophy”, Adam Smith
Photography by
The Scottish Jeremy Sutton-Hibbert

Enlightenment

The 18th century saw an extraordinary intellectual
boom time in Scotland. Alexander Broadie explains

how Glasgow University inspired some of the
period’s most brilliant thinkers

lasgow University’s main and particularly in their universities,
building, a magnificent there were creative thinkers, some of them
neo-Gothic edifice on geniuses, informing or even transforming
top of a hill overlooking the various academic disciplines.
the city, dates from In Aberdeen in the early days of the
the middle of the Enlightenment were men such as Colin
G 19th century. But parts Maclaurin, a brilliant mathematician who
of the building – in particular sections of its won warm praise from Sir Isaac Newton,
fine gateway, now known as Pearce Lodge, and the liberal educational theorist George
and the Lion and Unicorn stairway, next to Turnbull. One of Turnbull’s students at the
the Memorial Chapel – can be traced back to city’s Marischal College was Thomas Reid,
the 17th century; the statues of the lion and who would later replace Adam Smith as
unicorn (shown on page 108) that flank the professor of moral philosophy at Glasgow.
stairway were created in 1690. He was the most important figure in the
Both the stairway and the lodge form Scottish school of common sense philosophy,
a visual link with the university’s glorious which was dominant in North America and
past. During the Age of Enlightenment France during the following century.
in the 18th century, Glasgow’s was, in the Meantime, at Edinburgh University
fullest sense, an Enlightenment university, we find the philosopher Dugald Stewart,
as indeed it still is. the sociologist Adam Ferguson and the
The Enlightenment movement historian William Robertson. And living
championed reason over tradition and in the capital city, but not having university
was characterised by great scientific and posts, were David Hume, one of the greatest
intellectual achievements. It was a truly philosophers of the Scottish Enlightenment,
international phenomenon, yet shone and James Hutton, whose Theory of the
nowhere more brightly than in Scotland, Earth has earned him the title ‘founder of
and in Scotland nowhere more brightly than modern geology’.
in Glasgow University. At Glasgow University, along with Smith
For a country to have an Enlightenment, and Reid, was the philosopher Francis
two elements must be in place. The first is Hutcheson, the physician William Cullen,
a large number of creative people who think the chemist Joseph Black and the engineer
for themselves instead of merely assenting to James Watt.
authority. The second is a level of toleration These formidable thinkers took advantage
that permits such people to express of the Scottish religious and political
themselves without risk of retribution. authorities’ relatively relaxed attitude to
On these two counts, by the standards new and challenging ideas to set the agenda
of the day, Scotland was one of the most for cutting-edge research across Europe. JEREMY SUTTON-HIBBERT
enlightened countries in 18th-century Things were very different in France, whose
Europe. In many places, but especially in the many enlightened figures had to contend
cities of Aberdeen, Glasgow and Edinburgh, with an absolutist monarchy and church

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