Scottish Enlightenment

thinking first appeared in the mid 1600’s to mid-1700. The age of enlightenment refers to the period during which an intellectual movement spread throughout most of the western world. Previously society was dominated by religious doctrine and superstition. The feudal system and divine right to rule was largely unquestioned in society. Rene Descartes published Meditations in 1641 and introduced the "Method of Doubt" in which the concept of God was finally met with scepticism. Descartes along with other influential figures such as, John Locke, Voltaire, Thomas Hobbes, Jean Jacques Rousseau and Baron de Montesquieu paved the way for a more logical interpretation of society. This process of demystification led to the gradual…

Scottish Enlightenment In his book, Reading the Scottish Enlightenment: Books and Their Readers in Provincial Scotland, author Mark R.M. Towsey set out to discover the history of reading and how popular books by the likes of David Hume and William Robertson were received in 18th century Scotland. Towsey delves into historical library catalogues in hopes to uncover the impact that certain books had on readers lives and personal beliefs in order to gain perspective on how readers from different…

Edmund Morgan, an American historian and a previous history professor at Yale University, unveils how slavery was able to exist in America while liberty was held at the highest of standards in his journal Slavery and Freedom: The American Paradox. After sifting through the stories of our nations founding fathers and most important men of the American Revolution his discovers that, unlike most other historians, the fopaux we call slavery did not begin as a racist act. Morgan also discovered that…

or secondary, in order to receive a better evaluation of the credibility and information provided in the text. It is important to study primary sources in history because they can be directly related to the topic and time period that you are addressing and, when thoroughly studying the author, the intent, and background information, you can have a firsthand experience compared to a textbooks reiteration. More specifically, many primary sources were created during the Enlightenment, where…

Brief bio: David Hume was an outstanding philosopher historian, economist, and essayist from Scotland. He was an important figure in the Scottish enlightenment, and, along with John Locke and George Berkeley, one of the three main figureheads of the influential British Empiricism movement. He was born on 26 April 1711 and died on the 25 August, 1776, at the age of 65 either due to bowel or liver cancer. Hume was a fierce opponent of the rationalism of Descartes, as well as an atheist and a…

In community education there is also often a responsibility with working with poor or disadvantaged communities and this stems from the mid 1900s when reforms began in relation to health, housing and government and people responding to and supporting the voice of the poor admist these reforms. In Part 1 of the Scottish Executive Guidance for Community Learning and Development there is a section which reads ‘In many parts of Scotland poverty and disadvantage are concentrated in particular…

Lewis Grassic Gibbon was the pseudonym of James Leslie Mitchell (1901-1935). Born of peasant ancestry, Gibbon was an active socialist and writer at work during the Scottish Renaissance of the early to mid twentieth century alongside such contemporaries as Neil M. Gunn (1891-1973) and Hugh MacDiarmid (1892-1978). The author 's careful employment of stream-of-consciousness technique, the Scots idiom and social realism have marked this particular text out as one of the most innovative and defining…

parliament, nor can they assemble binding legislation of their own. No Parliament can bind a future parliament meaning that the current parliament cannot create a law that a future parliament would be unable to edit. In its simplest terms parliament is the highest legal authority, however parliament is not the highest decision making body that is the government. Also, parliament is not the most powerful body as that responsibility lies with the people of the UK. As the years have gone by,…

In 1707, The Act of Union forged the nation of Great Britain. This joined the English and Scottish Parliaments into the British Parliament centered in London. The Union promised Scots unhindered access to English markets and colonies. The possibility of economic benefit through trade was a significant pro-union sentiment, expressed best by a Commissioner of Scottish Parliament: This nation is behind all other nations of Europe, for many years, with respect to the effects of an extended trade.…

is the primary source of Scots law and it is decided and approved by the parliamentary will. There are three sources of legislation binding in Scots law: - European legislation - UK legislation - Scottish legislation The law-making power of the…