Abstract

This book is explicitly about ideas canvassed during the Scottish Enlightenment, albeit with some preliminary attempt to anchor them in their original historical and social contexts. The editor insists on a distinctively Scottish dimension to the ideas discussed, and claims that the book tackles central issues from three viewpoints: the first emphasizes the social sciences, the second the natural sciences, and the third is more loosely inclusive, aiming to be more holistic and arguably describable as “cultural.” There is nothing on technological ideas nor, in most cases, on how ideas were excited or modified by the ideas and practices in operation at the time.