1988/01/01 by Roger L. Emerson · 47 citations
Arts and Humanities · #Age of Enlightenment #Art #Classical Philosophy and Thought #Classics #Enlightenment #Environmental ethics #Historical Philosophy and Science #History #History of Medicine Studies #Law #Literature #Philosophy #Political science #Scots #Scottish Enlightenment #Sociology #Theology
paper · doi:10.1080/00033798800200111
published in Annals of Science 45(1), 41-72 (Taylor & Francis)
openalex publication_date 1988/01/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29
Summary This paper shows that in late seventeenth-century Scotland there existed a sizeable virtuoso community whose leaders were abreast of European developments in philosophy, history and science. Moreover, by c. 1700, Sir Robert Sibbald was attempting to organize a learned society modelled upon those he knew in Europe and upon London's Royal Society. The interests of the virtuosi and their attempts to institutionalize their pursuits laid much of the ground work for the Scottish Enlightenment. The Royal Society of Scotland which Sir Robert hoped to found never became a reality, but the academic ideals which he propounded came to fruition in the Philosophical Society of Edinburgh and later bodies such as the Royal Society of Edinburgh and the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland. The intellectual inquiries and achievements of Sir Robert and his friends, particularly those in medicine and natural history, continued to be of interest to later Scots. They, thanks in part to the influence of the Newtonian physician Archibald Pitcaire, improved upon Sibbald's naïve Baconianism, but to a surprising degree their concerns had also been his.