Crowded with Genius: The Scottish Enlightenment: Edinburgh's Moment of the Mind [Hardcover]

James Buchan (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 25, 2003

In the early eighteenth century, Edinburghwas a filthy backwater synonymous with poverty and disease, and recently famous for religious persecution. When this small walled-off city surrendered to a handful of Highlanders in 1745, things had never looked bleaker. Yet by century's end, the ancient Scottish capital had become the marvel of modern Europe, thanks to a group of friends whose trailblazing ingenuity and passion for ideas changed the way all of us look at the world.

It was in Edinburgh that a unique gathering of the finest minds of the day came together and made breathtaking innovations in architecture, politics, science, the arts and economics, all of which continue to echo loudly today. This was a time of radical upheaval and advancement, and a place of such cerebral stature as to rival the Athens of Socrates. Adam Smith penned The Wealth of Nations. James Boswell produced The Life of Samuel Johnson. Alongside them, pioneers -- such as the philosophers David Hume and Adam Ferguson, the poet Robert Burns, the chemist James Black, the geologist James Hutton, and the novelist Sir Walter Scott -- transformed the way we understand our perceptions and feelings, sickness and health, relations between the sexes, the natural world, and the purpose of existence.

In Crowded with Genius, James Buchan, himself a Scot with a strong attachment to this history, beautifully reconstructs the intimate geographic scale and boundless intellectual milieu of Enlightenment Edinburgh. With the scholarship of a historian and the elegance of a novelist, he tells the story of the triumph of this unlikely town and the men whose vision brought it into being. Buchan has written an extraordinary account of the movement that turned Edinburgh from a city under siege into a hotbed of brilliant achievements that changed the course of history and gave birth to the modern mind.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In a span of 50 years in the late 18th century, Edinburgh, a city of merely 40,000 inhabitants, contained some of the Enlightenment's most important thinkers, such as philosopher David Hume, economist Adam Smith, biographer James Boswell and scientist James Hutton. Buchan, a Whitbread-winning novelist and critic, brings this remarkable era to life, opening with a brief history of the failed rebellion of 1745 and the romanticism that lingered in the Scottish psyche. He also stresses the importance of the Presbyterian Church, but emphasizes that it lost much of its power over Scottish intellectuals. One such intellectual was the influential philosopher David Hume, who was attacked as a heretic but being, in his own words, "naturally of cheerful and sanguine temper," he "soon recovered the blow." A similarly sharp portrait is painted of the life and work of Adam Smith, whose work expressed the rise of the power of commercialism. Buchan also devotes some of his narrative to science, examining Edinburgh as a global center of medical education, and to literature, in which Scotsmen such as novelist Henry Mackenzie and poet Robert Burns would blaze the way for the Age of Romanticism. Throughout, Buchan writes well and does a fine job arguing the case for Edinburgh's disproportionately large impact on 18th-century intellectual history. Yet much of this material has been covered before, most recently in Arthur Herman's enjoyable How the Scots Invented the Modern World, which many readers might find more accessible on complex matters like Hume's philosophy. 16 pages of b&w photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

*Starred Review* Nothing surprised eighteenth-century residents of London and Paris more than the unexpected emergence of Edinburgh as a center of cultural illumination. Critic and novelist Buchan recounts the ascendance of the Scottish capital in a spellbinding chronicle of municipal renascence. Curiously, that renascence begins with the disaster that Scottish forces bring upon themselves in 1745 by rallying around the Young Pretender. In that debacle, Buchan identifies the shock that emboldens a long-benighted people into breaking with a past of kirk and clan. The subsequent narrative--alive with personalities, rich in ideas--introduces readers to the philosophers who transform a defeated city into a triumphant new Athens with powerful theories in ethics (Hutcheson), economics (Smith), logic (Hume), and natural history (Hutton). And while Scottish philosophers instruct the world in principles of wealth and geology, Scottish literary artists thrill the globe with unparalleled works of sentiment (Mackenzie) and sublimity (MacPherson). At home, proud Edinburghers stroll streets lined with buildings of admirable new architecture (Craig), including an imposing new hospital providing the laboratory for daring experiments in medicine (Cullen). But the Edinburgh miracle cannot last: the supreme Scottish bard, Robert Burns, sings the swan song of the epoch when he visits the city shortly before the horrors of the French Revolution plunge all of Great Britain into chill conservatism. An impressively sophisticated and multilayered cultural history. Bryce Christensen
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 448 pages
• Publisher: Harper; 1 edition (November 25, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060558881
• ISBN-13: 978-0060558888
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.3 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #882,387 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

28 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Northern lights, March 13, 2004

By 

Stephen A. Haines (Ottawa, Ontario Canada) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Crowded with Genius: The Scottish Enlightenment: Edinburgh's Moment of the Mind (Hardcover)

According to Thomas Cahill, the Irish Saved Civilization. Perhaps so, but according to James Buchan it was the Scots who moved civilization forward to modern times. Even at that, it was Edinburgh that became the pivot of the Scottish Enlightenment. With the expulsion of Bonnie Prince Charlie in 1745, the "auld Reekie", stinky, backward, provincial Edinburgh, was transformed into an intellectual hotbed. Philosophy, science, medicine and other fields found expression through this city to the world. Pushing aside the clans, tartans and the remains of the Celtic traditions, a new outlook developed in Scotland's capital. The speed of its rise was phenomenal. Within twenty years a wave of philosophers, scientists and poets, accompanied by a revision in social standards swept the city.

Analysing the Scottish Enlightenment is a monumental task. Controversies and inconsistencies abound. This Calvinist society rose to support a Roman Catholic pretender to the British throne. While condemning the Papacy as intruding on the lives of the faithful, the Scottish Kirk was thoroughly integrated into the education, politics and legal system of Edinburgh. Buchan neatly ties all these conflicting forces into a readable, highly detailed package. He is able to expose all these facets with minimal confusion as he introduces us to the major figures that would make the city a northern Athens. His focus is on personalities, with leading figures ambling, cavorting or dashing across the pages according to their style.

His first noteworthy figure is, of course, David Hume. Perhaps no individual set the tone for the Scottish Enlightenment as did Hume. Controversial and inconsistent in his own way, he struggled to shed the impediments of traditional dogmas while avoiding accusations of rebellion or heresy. He set the tone Edinburgh lights would follow - travelling the Continent, examining the human condition, and writing in "Southern English", as Buchan calls it. The language of London was a key element in what was to follow. English, instead of "Scottish English" would be the export licence conveying ideas up and down the British island, thence abroad.

Hume is followed by such notables as Adam Smith, John Home, the strange saga of James MacPherson's attempt to resurrect Scots' traditions by fabricating them, and the founder of geology, James Hutton. Other, lesser known lights, but surely contributors to this Northern Renaissance are dramatist Alexander Wedderburn, publisher Robert Chambers and the more practical contributions of George Drummond. There is more to Edinburgh's rise to prominence than the expressions of thoughtful men. In this period, the city descended from an enclave surrounding its "castle in the air" to build up the surroundings with residences, schools and market centres. The "salacious" hobbies of dance and the theatre intruded on the Kirk's disdain and overcame it. Promenading, weather permitting, was no longer hazardous. Although whisky replaced ale as the most consumed drink, imbibing moved from ale house to town house. This practice helped enable the role women to improve and conversations expanded to include both sexes.

Buchan has granted us a vivid and readable account of Edinburgh's burst of intellectual and social hatching. He does assume a certain level of knowledge on the reader's part - a level unlikely to be found on this side of the Atlantic. He graces the narrative with some illustrative material, but no matter how much the publishers include, there couldn't be enough. The maps of the city would be more useful if larger, but the tone the time is well conveyed. Some of his conclusions might be arguable, but his making Charles the son, and not the grandson, of Erasmus Darwin must be noted. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Nice piece of history, September 23, 2005

By 

Neil A. Ward - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Crowded with Genius: The Scottish Enlightenment: Edinburgh's Moment of the Mind (Hardcover)

I enjoyed this dip into a pocket of history that I knew only by allusion from other works. Historical surveys are always entertaining; this one might have been improved by providing more depth and analysis--erudition--in probing the subtleties of the philosophical or economic world of the luminaries presented, or suggesting a reading program.

13 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars very disappointing, December 27, 2004

By 

reviewer in central nj - See all my reviews

This review is from: Crowded with Genius: The Scottish Enlightenment: Edinburgh's Moment of the Mind (Hardcover)

Because of its glowing reviews and my strong interest in learning more about Edinburgh and Scotland, I had high expectations for this book. I was very disappointed. It assumes that the reader has a strong knowledge of Scottish history, so the neophyte will not learn much. Yet, the book is written at such a superficial level that a knowledgeable person will learn nothing new. As another Amazon reviewer points out, the book is essentially themeless and has no point of view. I know that the book received many positive reviews, but it is difficult to know what audience will get much out of it. I havn't been this disappointed in a book for a long time.