This chapter traces the history of the Scottish school of common-sense philosophy from c.1720 to 1828. It begins by examining the teaching of George Turnbull and his fellow regents at Marischal College, Aberdeen, in order to shed light on the early philosophical development of the so-called founder of the school, Thomas Reid. It next analyses the evolution of Reid’s critique of Humean scepticism and the theory of ideas in the years preceding the publication of his An Inquiry into the Human Mind, on the Principles of Common Sense (1764). Reid’s appeal to common sense is then compared and contrasted with those of James Beattie and James Oswald, whose writings, along with Reid’s Inquiry, were attacked by Joseph Priestley and other critics in the 1770s. Following a consideration of Reid’s response to Priestley in his Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man (1785), the chapter discusses Dugald Stewart’s reformulation of Reid’s conception of common sense and his genealogy of the Scottish school of philosophy. Lastly it charts the collapse of the common-sense school around the time of Stewart’s death in 1828.

This chapter examines the networks and connections within the early modern legal community of Aberdeen, Scotland. It reconstructs a particular master-apprentice network of the early-seventeenth to the mid-eighteenth centuries, showing the importance of this educational mechanism both for entrance into the local legal profession and for establishing professional contacts. This chapter also reconstructs the networks which were focused on two of Aberdeen’s most important courts of the period—the sheriff and commissary courts. It shows the extent to which the men who held offices in these courts were interconnected, both personally and professionally, and reflects on what this discovery reveals about contemporaneous local court practice. Finally, this chapter concludes by reflecting on how men of law may have regarded their own networks, through an examination of their children’s god-parentage records.

When and how did the Scottish Enlightenment take shape? What were its major influences - Scottish, English, European and other? Can we account for its unique character? Who were its major players? What did they want and achieve? Answers to these basic questions hinge on the debatable nature of the Scottish Enlightenment. Regardless of where one’s emphases fall or the tenor of the Scottish Enlightenment one sees, there is no single context for it. This chapter explores several which were important for all of them.

The Scottish Enlightenment was situated in a particular geography and climate and within distinct population trends. Patrons were important to it. So, too, were institutional contexts and the wider eighteenth-century Republic of Letters. While Edinburgh was at the heart of the Scottish Enlightenment, Glasgow and Aberdeen provide other and differing contexts.

We find that the contexts shaping the Scottish Enlightenment differed from those elsewhere. Culturally diverse and eager for improvement from the late seventeenth century, by 1800, the Scots could boast of an Enlightenment to which belonged several of the century’s best philosophers and historians, its most accomplished political economist and many notable social thinkers, scientists and medical men, rhetoricians, theologians and artists. Their works circulated widely, engendering debate and excitement in Britain, on the Continent and in America.