Softcover

ISBN 10: 1841586404 ISBN 13: 9781841586403

Publisher: Birlinn Ltd, 2007

The Scottish Enlightenment was one of the greatest intellectual and cultural movements that the world has ever seen. Its legacy in philosophy, history, science, music, art, architecture, economics, and many other disciplines cannot be overstated. This book considers the totality of achievements from this most astonishing period of Scottish history and how they still animate and inspire the world today.

Review:

'an accessible primer on the main ideas of the Scottish Enlightenment' - Edinburgh Review'direct, considered ... [gets] down to the nuts and bolts of how the Enlightenment worked' - Scottish Affairs

Synopsis:

'The Scottish Enlightenment' was one of the truly great intellectual and cultural movements of the world. Its achievements in science, philosophy, history, economics, and other disciplines also, were immense; and its influence has hardly if at all been dimmed in the intervening two centuries. This book, written for the general reader, considers the achievement of this most astonishing period of Scottish history. It attends not only to the ideas that made the 'Scottish Enlightenment' such a wondrous moment, but also to the people themselves who generated these ideas - men such as David Hume and Adam Smith, who are still read for the sake of the light they shed on contemporary issues.