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In the 18th-century, influential thinkers such as Francis Hutcheson, Adam Smith and David Hume, paved the way for the modernization of Scotland and the entire Atlantic world.[43] Hutcheson, the father of the Scottish Enlightenment, championed political liberty and the right of popular rebellion against tyranny. Smith, in his monumental Wealth of Nations (1776), advocated liberty in the sphere of commerce and the global economy. Hume developed philosophical concepts that directly influenced James Madison and thus the U.S. Constitution.[44] Scientific progress was influenced by, amongst others, the discovery of carbon dioxide (fixed air) by the chemist Joseph Black, the argument for deep time by the gentleman geologist James Hutton and the invention of the steam engine by James Watt .[45] In a similar vein, the University of Edinburgh's Medical School was arguably the leading scientific institution of Europe. Students from far and wide travelled to the university to study chemistry with William Cullen, James Black and Thomas Charles hope; natural history with John Hope, John Walker and Robert Jameson; and anatomy with the Alexander Monro primus, secondus and tertius.[46] In many ways the foregoing names represent what could be called the first phase of the Scottish Enlightenment. The next stage, from the 1780s to the 1810s consisted of younger generation of scholars intent on advancing and transforming the scientific, political and social ideologies of their predecessors. The end result was a reinterpretation and popularisation of the 'Scottish Enlightenment' as a set of ideals that were in turn significantly influential on liberal politics and the university systems of Britain, America and, later, Australia. The de facto leader of this movement was the mathematician, philosopher and journalist Dugald Stewart. Other names include Sir Walter Scott, Alexander Fraser Tytler, Sir James Hall and John Playfair Stewart lectured at the University of Edinburgh during the 1790s[47] and then took his views to the British public through his books and many essays in the progressive periodicals that circulated in across the British Empire. These late Enlightenment publications, combined with his many books, went on to have a profound impact on nineteenth-century utilitarianism, psychology, metaphysics, political economy and, crucially, classic liberalism. |
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