Scottish Enlightenment
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The Scottish Enlightenment was the period in 18th- and early-19th-century Scotland characterised by an outpouring of intellectual and scientific accomplishments. By the eighteenth century, Scotland ha
David Hume and Adam Smith on the Scottish National Portrait Gallery
David Hume
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David Hume was a Scottish philosopher, historian, economist and essayist who is known for his highly influential system of empiricism, philosophical scepticism and metaphysical naturalism. Beginning w
Scottish Enlightenment
…and sociology. Among the Scottish thinkers and scientists of the period were Joseph Black, James Boswell, Robert Burns, William Cullen, Adam Ferguson, David Hume, Francis Hutcheson, James Hutton, Lord Monboddo, John Playfair, Thomas Reid, Adam Smith, and Dugald Stewart. The Scottish Enlightenment had effects far…
Portrait of David Hume by Allan Ramsay, 1766
An engraving of Hume from the first volume of his The History of England, 1754
David Hume's mausoleum by Robert Adam in the Old Calton Burial Ground, Edinburgh
Statue of Hume, sculpted by Alexander Stoddart, on the Royal Mile in Edinburgh