If you remember your European history from middle or high school (or both), you’ll know that the “Age of Enlightenment” was not about dieting and weight loss, it was an intellectual movement in the 17th and 18th centuries. It focused on rationalism and gaining knowledge empircally. Although the Enlightenment applies to Europe overall, the movement wasn’t homogeneous throughout the whole continent. In particular, Scotland had its own, more localized Enlightenment movement. It started a bit later, in the 18th century, and lasted into the 19th. It was a time when loads of intellectual and scientific accomplishments were achieved in Scotland. One of the major figures in the Scottish Enlightenment was Adam Ferguson, who was born June 20, 1723.
Ferguson wouldn’t have identified his own birthday as June 20; at the time the calendar used in Scotland was not what we refer to today, and his birthday before the conversion would have been July 1. He also might have argued about being called “Adam Ferguson,” because he was born in the village of Logierait, and spoke Gaelic growing up. In Scottish Gaelic his name was Adhamh MacFhearghais. And later in life he was also known as Ferguson of Raith. There doesn’t seem to be much information about why he would have that nickname — there was a place in Scotland called Raith, but Ferguson wasn’t born there and doesn’t seem to have ever lived there.
Ferguson lived to the very old age, for the time, of 92. During his long career he served as a chaplain in the army (the Scottish regiment still known as the Black Watch), a librarian in Edinburgh, a tutor to a wealthy noble family, and a professor of philosophy at the University of Edinburgh. As a professor his specialty was “pneumatics”, which we would call “mental philosophy.” He was concerned with the nature of the human mind, morality, and how individuals interacted in society. He published An Essay on the History of Civil Society in 1767, which was reprinted across Europe in several different languages, and in 1778 was part of a British commission that tried, unsuccessfully, to negotiate with the colonists in North America who were staging the American Revolution.
Ferguson is considered the father, or at least one of the fathers, of the whole field of sociology. In addition to that, he was an historian, and published the History of the Progress and Termination of the Roman Republic. It was, for the time, a bestseller, and went through several editions. In 1793 he decided to revise his history to publish a new edition, and for research traveled extensively around Europe. At the time he was already 70, already a pretty advanced age for Europeans in the 1700s.
Ferguson is well remembered for An Essay on the History of Civil Society, The History of the Progress and Termination of the Roman Republic, and two books on morality, Principles of Moral and Political Science and institutes of Moral Philosophy. His views on society are still held by some; he found traditional societies, such as towns and villages, beneficial for everyone involved, but found commercial society damaging, as it made people “weak, dishonourable, and unconcerned for their community.” He was married and had seven children, at least two of whom (Adam and John Ferguson) achieved high ranks in the British Army and Royal Navy. He was known throughout Europe during his lifetime, and there are even surviving letters to him from George Washington, the general during the American Revolution and first US president.
