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June 20th 1723 |
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Adam Ferguson and The Scottish EnlightenmentIn the 18th century there was, for a brief period, a wonderful and exciting flowering of intellectual life in Scotland. For some fifty years, Scotland, and in particular Edinburgh, was the cultural, scientific and theological centre of Europe. The Scottish Enlightenment produced a ferment of new ideas, new methods of teaching and new discoveries in science. The leaders of the Enlightenment, David Hume, Adam Smith, Joseph Priestly, William F. Robertson, Lord Kames, Gilbert Stewart, Joseph Black and others were in most cases contemporaneous and personal friends.Among the group was Adam Ferguson who was born in Logierait in 1723 and was probably unique in being the only Gaelic speaking member among his contemporaries. As a young man he had prepared for the church and for a long time was chaplain for the Black Watch. Later he left the army for Edinburgh where he obtained a librarianship and in 1764 was appointed to the coveted chair of Pneumatics (study of gases) and Moral Philosophy, a post which he held for the next twenty-one years. Perhaps his best known work was ‘An Essay on the History of Civil Society’, published some ten years before ‘The Wealth of Nations’. It won immediate critical acclaim and went through seven editions during his lifetime as well as being translated into German and French. With the publication of this book and his lectures in Edinburgh, Ferguson may well claim to be the father of modern sociology. In 1782 he published his ‘History of the Progress and Termination of the Roman Republic’ which, though later superseded by Gibbon’s ‘Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire’ was very well thought of at the time and was also translated into French and German. He was particularly effective in his descriptions of the many military campaigns, helped no doubt by his own experiences in the Black Watch. He is said to have been a kindly man with a happy home life. As one of his contemporaries put it, “he conjoined the simplicity, elevation and ethical hardihood of the early Romans with Grecian refinement and eloquence.” He died at the age of ninety-two. |