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Notes
C. Ginzburg, “Clues: Roots of an Evidential Paradigm”, in Myths, Emblems, Clues, trans. John and Anne C. Tedeschi (London, 1990), pp. 96–125.
For a recent survey of science teaching in the Atlantic world during the 18th century see L. Brockliss, “Science, the Universities, and Other Public Spaces: Teaching Science in Europe and the Americas”, in R. Porter (ed.), The Cambridge History of Science, Volume 4: Eighteenth-Century Science (Cambridge, 2003), pp. 44–86.
Thomas Jefferson to Dugald Stewart, 21 June 1789, The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, J. P. Boyd et al. (ed.), 19 Vols to date (Princeton, 1950-), 15:204.
D. Stewart, Dissertation... exhibiting a General View of the Progress of Metaphysical and Ethical Philosophy, Since the Revival of Letters in Europe, in The Encyclopædia Britannica, 8th ed., Vol. 1 (1840; reprint Farnborough: Gregg International Publishers, 1970), p. 249. But compare Stewart’s view with the claim made by the 17th-century Scottish mathematician James Corss that apart from Napier Scotland had produced few mathematicians of note; see Corss as quoted in The Wealth of a Nation in the National Museums of Scotland, J. Calder (ed.) (Edinburgh and Glasgow, 1989), p. 91.
Hugh Trevor-Roper, “The Scottish Enlightenment”, Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century 58:1635–1658 (1967); idem., “The Scottish Enlightenment”, Blackwood’s Magazine 322:371–388 (1977); R. L. Emerson, “Natural Philosophy and the Problem of the Scottish Enlightenment”, Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century 242:243–291 (1986); idem., “Science and the Origins and Concerns of the Scottish Enlightenment”, History of Science 26:333–366 (1988); idem., “Sir Robert Sibbald, Kt, the Royal Society of Scotland and the Origins of the Scottish Enlightenment”, Annals of Science 45:41–72 (1988); idem., “Science and Moral Philosophy in the Scottish Enlightenment”, in M. A. Stewart (ed.) Studies in the Philosophy of the Scottish Enlightenment (Oxford, 1990), pp. 11–36. I have discussed Stewart’s historiographical legacy in “Dugald Stewart and the Invention of ‘the Scottish Enlightenment’”, in P. Wood (ed.) The Scottish Enlightenment: Essays in Reinterpretation (Rochester, NY, 2000), pp. 1–35.
T.C. Smout, A History of the Scottish People, 1560–1830 (Glasgow, 1979), pp. 251–252.
G. Sinclair, The Hydrostaticks; or, The Weight, Force, and Pressure of Fluid Bodies, Made Evident by Physical, and Sensible Experiments. Together with some Miscellany Observations, the Last Whereof is a is a Short History of Coal, and of all the Common, and Proper Accidents thereof; a Subject never Treated of before (Edinburgh, 1672); idem., The Principles of Astronomy and Navigation... (Edinburgh, 1688). Sinclair’s exchanges with Henry Oldenburg are discussed in A. Johns, The Nature of the Book: Print and Knowledge in the Making (Chicago and London, 1998), pp. 502–503.
Emerson, “Sir Robert Sibbald”.
A. Thomson, Biographical Sketch of David Skene, M.D., of Aberdeen; With Extracts from Correspondence Between Dr Skene and Linnœus and John Ellis, About the Year 1765 (Edinburgh, 1859), p. 6.
“Proposals By the Faculty of the University of Glasgow for buying Instruments necessary for Experiments and Observations in Natural Philosophy”, reproduced in P. Swinbank, “Experimental Science in the University of Glasgow at the Time of Joseph Black”, in A. D. C. Simpson (ed.), Joseph Black 1728–1799: A Commemorative Symposium (Edinburgh, 1982), pp. 23–35, 31; “Proposals for An Annual Course of Experimental Philosophy, in St. Salvator’s College of the University of St. Andrews” ([St. Andrews], n.d.); “Proposals for Setting on Foot a Compleat Course of Experimental Philosophy in the Marishal College of Aberdeen”, AUL MS 3017/10/18/2.
Abstract of Some Statutes and Orders of King’s College in Old Aberdeen. M.DCC.LIII. With Additions M.DCC.LIV [Aberdeen, 1754], pp. 13, 21.
[A. Gerard], Plan of Education in the Marischal College and University of Aberdeen, with the Reasons of it. Drawn up by the Order of the Faculty (Aberdeen, 1755), pp. 30, 34; see also the announcement of the Marischal reforms in The Scots Magazine 14:606 (1752).
I have discussed the curriculum reforms at King’s and Marischal in greater detail in The Aberdeen Enlightenment: The Arts Curriculum in the Eighteenth Century (Aberdeen, 1993), chap. 3.
For an insightful discussion of the role played by agricultural improvement in the formation of an audience for science in Edinburgh see S. Shapin, “The Audience for Science in Eighteenth Century Edinburgh”, History of Science 12:95–121 (1974).
Select Transactions of the Honourable the Society of Improvers in the Knowledge of Agriculture in Scotland, R. Maxwell (ed.) (Edinburgh, 1743), pp. x, xiii–iv.
C.W.J. Withers, “William Cullen’s Agricultural Lectures and Writings and the Development of Agricultural Science in Eighteenth-Century Scotland”, The Agricultural History Review 37:144–156, 150–151 (1989).
Wood, Aberdeen Enlightenment, pp. 92, 93–94; T. Reid, “Scheme of a Course of Philosophy”, AUL MS 2131/8/V/1, fol. 1r-v; idem., “Natural History 1753”, AUL MS 2131/6/V/10a, fol. 2v; J. Beattie, “Institutes of Natural History”, AUL MS M. 189, 2:41.
C. W. J. Withers, “A Neglected Scottish Agriculturalist: The ‘Georgical Lectures’ and Agricultural Writings of the Rev Dr John Walker (1731–1803)”, The Agricultural History Review 33:132–146 (1985).
I. J. Fleming and N. F. Robertson, Britain’s First Chair of Agriculture at the University of Edinburgh, 1790–1990: A History of the Chair founded by William Johnstone Pulteney (Edinburgh, 1990), esp. chaps. 1–3.
See in particular N. Phillipson, “Politics, Politeness and the Anglicisation of Early Eighteenth-Century Scottish Culture”, in R.A. Mason (ed.), Scotland and England, 1286–1815 (Edinburgh, 1987), pp. 226–247, and S. Shapin, “‘A Scholar and a Gentleman’: The Problematic Identity of the Scientific Practitioner in Early Modern England”, History of Science 29:279–327, 305 (1991).
AUL MSS 2131/4/I/18, fol. 2v and 2131/4/I/31, 3; Reid’s views on education are contextualized in J. C. Stewart-Robertson, “The Well-Principled Savage, or the Child of the Scottish Enlightenment”, Journal of the History of Ideas 42:503–525 (1981).
For their pointed attacks on scholasticism see J. Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, P. Nidditch (ed.) (Oxford, 1975), p. 10; [Robert Molesworth], An Account of Denmark, As It was in the Year 1692 (London, 1694), C4r-v. For his part, Locke recognized that the needs of scholarship were somewhat different from those of public life, but he did not think that the roles of the scholar and the gentleman were necessarily antithetical. On the differing needs of the scholar and the gentleman see J. Locke, Some Thoughts Concerning Education, W. John and J. S. Yolton (ed.) (Oxford, 1989), p. 249.
Locke, Some Thoughts, pp. 247, 248.
Locke, Some Thoughts, pp. 248–249. Compare here Shapin’s interpretation of these passages in “A Scholar and a Gentleman”, pp. 304–305.
Interestingly, in a manuscript dictated in 1703 and published posthumously in 1720, Locke said that the “proper calling” of a gentleman was “the service of his country”, and therefore suggested that gentlemen need only cultivate those studies which “treat of virtues and vices, of civil society, and the arts of government, and so will take in also law and history”; see J. Locke, “Some Thoughts Concerning Reading and Study for a Gentleman”, in M. Goldie (ed.), Political Essays (Cambridge, 1997), p. 350. There was, therefore, a degree of inconsistency in Locke’s position.
“Proposals for the Reformation of Schools and Universities, in order to the Better Education of Youth; Humbly Offered to the Serious Consideration of the High Court of Parliament”, in The Harleian Miscellany: Or, A Collection of Scarce, Curious, and Entertaining Pamphlets and Tracts, 8 Vols (London, 1744–1746), pp. 1:485–490. On the question of attribution see A. Fletcher, Political Works, J. Robertson (ed.) (Cambridge, 1997), pp. xxxvi–xxxvii.
“Proposals”, p. 489.
G. Turnbull, Observations Upon Liberal Education, T. O. Moore, Jr. (ed.) (Indianapolis, 2003), pp. 197–199, 319–327; D. Fordyce, Dialogues Concerning Education, 2nd ed. (London, 1745), esp. dialogue XI. Fordyce also discusses (pp. 23, 25) the teaching of mathematics and the sciences when describing his idealized academy (a description partly inspired by the academy run by Philip Doddridge). I have surveyed the educational ideals of Turnbull and Fordyce in Wood, Aberdeen Enlightenment, pp. 40–49, 50–55. For a slightly different interpretation of their significance see P. Jones, “The Polite Academy and the Presbyterians, 1720–1770”, in J. Dwyer, R. A. Mason, and A. Murdoch (eds.), New Perspectives on the Politics and Culture of Early Modern Scotland (Edinburgh, [1982]), pp. 156–178; idem., “The Scottish Professoriate and the Polite Academy, 1720–1746”, in I. Hont and M. Ignatieff (eds.), Wealth and Virtue: The Shaping of Political Economy in the Scottish Enlightenment (Cambridge, 1983), pp. 89–117. On Turnbull see also M. A. Stewart, “George Turnbull and Educational Reform”, in J. J. Carter and J. H. Pittock (eds.), Aberdeen and the Enlightenment (Aberdeen, 1987), pp. 95–103.
G. Turnbull, The Principles of Moral Philosophy, 2 Vols (London, 1740), 1:i–iii.
The same limitations are found in L. E. Klein, Shaftesbury and the Culture of Politeness: Moral Discourse and Cultural Politics in Early Eighteenth-Century England (Cambridge, 1994).
J. Stewart, “Some Advantages of the Study of Mathematicks, with Directions for Prosecuting the Same”, National Archives of Scotland, MS GD 248/616/2, 19; J. Walker, Lectures on Geology, H. W. W Scott (ed.) (Chicago and London, 1966), p. 2. The perception of the relevance of mathematics to the education of gentlemen was, in fact, relatively widespread; see the comments made by the master of the Ayr burgh school in 1729 quoted in D. J. Withrington, “Education and Society in the Eighteenth Century”, in N. T. Phillipson and R. Mitchison (eds.), Scotland in the Age of Improvement (Edinburgh, 1970), pp. 169–199, 170.
P. Wood, “Science, the Universities, and the Public Sphere in Eighteenth-Century Scotland”, History of Universities 13: pp. 99–135, 106–107 (1994).
T. Reid, “Natural History 1753”, AUL MS 2131/6/V/10a, fol. 1r.
John Bethune to unidentified correspondent, 25 September 1787, Edinburgh University Library, MS La.III.379/42, fol. 1r-v, as quoted in Wood, Aberdeen Enlightenment, p. 94.
On this point see Wood, Aberdeen Enlightenment, p. 2.
I have developed this point in “Science and the Pursuit of Virtue in the Aberdeen Enlightenment”, in Stewart, Studies, pp. 127–149, and “The Natural History of Man in the Scottish Enlightenment”, History of Science 28:89–123 (1990). See also Emerson, “Science and Moral Philosophy”.
On the emergence of chemistry as a distinct science in Scotland see A. L. Donovan, Philosophical Chemistry in the Scottish Enlightenment (Edinburgh, 1975), and J. Golinski, Science as Public Culture: Chemistry and Enlightenment in Britain, 1760–1820 (Cambridge, 1992), chap. 2. For a detailed study of the fragmentation of the curriculum at Glasgow see R. L. Emerson and P. Wood, “Science and Enlightenment in Glasgow, 1690–1802”, in C. W. J. Withers and P. Wood (eds.), Science and Medicine in the Scottish Enlightenment (East Linton, UK, 2002), pp. 79–142.
For Smith, the system of class fees was the key to the superiority of the Scottish universities when compared with those of Oxford and Cambridge; see A. Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, R. H. Campbell, A. S. Skinner, and W. B. Todd (eds.), 2 Vols (Oxford, 1976), 2:759–760.
On these points see the seminal article by J. B. Morrell, “The University of Edinburgh in the Late Eighteenth Century: Its Scientific Eminence and Academic Structure”, Isis 62:158–171 (1970), along with Wood, “Public Sphere”.
“Minute Book of the Farming Club at Gordon’s Mill 1758”, AUL MS 49, 26, 52, 140, 231. Reid’s method of keeping accounts is discussed in W. R. Humphries, “The Philosopher, The Farmer, and Commercial Education”, Scottish Educational Journal, 14 May: 619–620 and 21 May: 661–663 (1937). On the practical application of mathematics see T. Reid to R. Price [1772/3], in P. Wood (ed.), The Correspondence of Thomas Reid (Edinburgh, 2002), p. 64.
On the Society see The Minutes of the Aberdeen Philosophical Society, 1758–1773, H. L. Ulman (ed.) (Aberdeen, 1990).
Wood, “Public Sphere”; see also the more recent analysis in C. W. J. Withers, “Towards a History of Geography in the Public Sphere”, History of Science 36:45–78 (1998).
Developments in Scotland were more like those in Germany, for which see T. Broman, “The Habermasian Public Sphere and’ science in the Enlightenment’”, History of Science 36:123–149 (1998).
Extracts from the Records of the Burgh of Edinburgh 1665 to 1680, M. Wood (ed.) (Edinburgh and London, 1950), pp. 92–93.
On the Italian context see M. Biagioli, “The Social Status of Italian Mathematicians, 1450–1600”, History of Science 27:41–95 (1989).
Nothing of substance has been done on this subject since the appearance of two pioneering articles by J. A. Cable, “The Early History of Scottish Popular Science”, Studies in Adult Education 4:34–45 (1972) and “Early Scottish Science: The Vocational Provision”, Annals of Science 30:179–199 (1973).
On Reid’s election see my “‘The Fittest Man in the Kingdom’: Thomas Reid and the Glasgow Chair of Moral Philosophy”, Hume Studies 23: 277–313, 289–291 (1997).
C. Denina, An Essay on the Revolutions of Literature, trans. John Murdoch (London, [1771]), pp. 276–277.
Wood, Aberdeen Enlightenment, p. 161. Ilay’s scientific pursuits are described in R. L. Emerson, “The Scientific Interests of Archibald Campbell, 1st Earl of Ilay and 3rd Duke of Argyll (1682–1761)”, Annals of Science 59: 21–56 (2002).
On Bute see R. L. Emerson, “Lord Bute and the Scottish Universities, 1760–1792”, and D. P. Miller, “‘My favourite studdys’: Lord Bute as Naturalist”, in K. W. Schweizer (ed.), Lord Bute: Essays in Re-interpretation (Leicester, 1988), pp. 147–179, 213–239.
The phrase “hot-bed of genius” comes from T. Smollett, The Expedition of Humphry Clinker, L. M. Knapp (ed.), revised by Paul-Gabriel Boucé (Oxford, 1984), p. 233, where it is applied specifically to Edinburgh.
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Wood, P. (2006). Candide in Caledonia: The Culture of Science in the Scottish Universities, 1690–1805. In: Feingold, M., Navarro-Brotons, V. (eds) Universities and Science in the Early Modern Period. Archimedes, vol 12. Springer, Dordrecht . https://doi.org/10.1007/1-4020-3975-1_13
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