This is a book about the Scottish Enlightenment. It is also a book about Edinburgh, the chief city of that Enlightenment. There have been many books about the Scottish Enlightenment, and about the role of Edinburgh in it: but this one is different. In the chapters that follow, this book will align the importance of Edinburgh for the national economy and national culture at the end of the seventeenth and the first half of the eighteenth centuries with its centrality as a place for the generation of ideas and innovatory practices. In this introductory chapter and those that follow, I will be primarily examining not the ideas of the Enlightenment nor its chief figures, but the mechanics of Enlightenment. Among the questions that will be asked of the evidence are: ‘What is the (Scottish) Enlightenment?’ ‘How did the Enlightenment happen?’ ‘When did it happen?’ and ‘Why did it happen in Edinburgh?’

What is the (Scottish) Enlightenment ?

The terms ‘Scottish’ and ‘Enlightenment’ have both been frequently challenged over the years by commentators who see them as rhetorical claims rather than real concepts. For some Enlightenment scholars, the ‘Scottish Enlightenment’ is a core brand to be defended: ‘an icon of Scottish self-esteem and identity’, as Bruce Lenman puts it.