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 Finding Enlightenment in Scotland

    In the 1740s，the famous French philosophy Voltaire said “We look to Scotland for all our ideas of civilization.”That’s not a bad advertisement for any country，especially when it comes to attracting people in search of a first class education~

   Yet some people go even further than that.According to the American author Arthur Herman，the Scots invented the modem world itself.He argues that Scottish thinkers and intellectuals worked out many of the most important ideas on which modem life depends-everything from the scientific method to market economics.Their ideas did not just spread amongst intellectuals，but to those people in business，government and the sciences who actually shaped the Western world.

    It all started during the period that historians call the Scottish Enlightenment，which is usually seen as taking place between the years 1740 and 1800.At this time，Scotland was home to a number of thinkers who made an important shift in the course of Western philosophy.Before that，philosophy was mainly concerned with religion.For the thinkers of the Scottish Enlightenment，the proper study of humanity was mankind itself.

   Their reasoning was practical.For the philosopher David Hume，humanity was the right subject for philosophy because we can examine human behavior and so find real evidence of how people think and feel.And from that we can make judgements about the societies we live in and make concrete suggestions about how they can be improved，for universal benefit.

    Hume was not a scientist himself，but his enquiry into the nature of knowledge laid the foundations for the scientific method-the pursuit of truth through experiment.His friend and fellow resident of Edinburgh，Adam Smith，famously applied the study of mankind to the ways in which mankind does business.Trade，he argued，was a form of information.Money is the way in which people tell each other what they want，and how much people pay is the best way we have of knowing how much somebody wants something.In pursuing our own interests through trading in markets，we all come to benefit each other.

    Smith’s idea of “enlightened self-interest”has come to dominate modem views of economics.It also has wider applications.He was one of the first major philosophers to point out that nations can become rich，free and powerful more efficiently through peace，trade and invention than by means of war and plunder.

    The original Scottish Enlightenment is thought to have ended with the lives of Smith，Hume and the other thinkers who lived in Scotland at that time.But a wider Scottish Enlightenment can still be seen.It exists in the way that the ideas evolved at that time still underpin our theories.It also exists in Scotland itself in an educational tradition that combines academic excellence with practical orientation.