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The Philosophical Society of Edinburgh 1737–1747

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2009

Roger L. Emerson
Roger L. Emerson
Affiliation:
Department of History, University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario N6A 5C2, Canada.
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Extract

Several essays, articles, and papers have appeared during the last fifteen years which have shed light on the place and function of science in the intellectual life of eighteenth-century Scotland. Some have concentrated on ideological factors such as the increasing concerns with polite culture, improvement, and the reaction of the Scottish élite to the Act of Union. Others have noted the roles of Jacobites and Whigs in the production of a culture which was unique to Scotland. The generalist educational ideals held by Scots have been explored, as have their philosophical, methodological, and mathematical traditions. Another set of papers has fruitfully examined ‘the social role of knowledge’ and has attempted through studies of the politics of Scottish science and a consideration of its audience to show how the characteristics of local provincial society could influence if not ‘determine scientific activity, its social organization or intellectual structure’. Concerns with the institutionalization of scientific activities and the acceptance of new values have also led to studies of the universities, medical corporations, and societies (both adult and student) which provided focuses for scientific enquiry. All of these studies have emphasized the aspects of science north of the Tweed between about 1690 and 1830 which seem uniquely Scottish. No one would deny the value of these works but perhaps it is now time to redress the balance and to notice how typical much of the scientific work of the Scots was, and how easily it and the institutions through which it was pursued can be fitted into the wider context of the European Enlightenment.

Type
Research Article
Information
The British Journal for the History of Science , Volume 12 , Issue 2 , July 1979 , pp. 154 - 191
Copyright
Copyright © British Society for the History of Science 1979

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References

NOTES

For permission to consult or to quote from manuscripts in their possession I should like to thank Sir John Clerk of Penicuik, Bt; Dr T. I. Rae, Keeper of Manuscripts in the National Library of Scotland; Dr John Imrie, Keeper of the Records of Scotland; Mr W. H. Rutherford, Secretary of the Royal Society of Edinburgh; Mr C. A. McLaren, Keeper of Manuscripts at Aberdeen University Library; Mr Robert Smart and Mr Ronald Cant, Keepers of Manuscripts and the Muniments at the University of St Andrews; Mr C. P. Finlayson, Keeper of Manuscripts at the University of Edinburgh; Mr Jack Baldwin, Keeper of Special Collections at Glasgow University Library; Miss P. J. Porter, Assistant Keeper of Manuscripts at the British Library; and Mr N. H. Robinson, Librarian of the Royal Society of London.

1 For a short bibliography of these studies see: Christie, J. R. R., ‘The rise and fall of Scottish science’ in Crosland, M. (ed.), The emergence of science in Western Europe, London, 1975, pp. 111–26Google Scholar; Morrell, J. B., ‘The Edinburgh Town Council and its University, 1717–1766’, in Anderson, R. G. W. and Simpson, A. D. C. (eds.), The early years of the Edinburgh Medical School, Edinburgh, 1976, pp. 46–65Google Scholar; Donovan, A. L., Philosophical chemistry in the Scottish Enlightenment, Edinburgh, 1975Google Scholar; Chitnis, A., The Scottish Enlightenment, London and Totawa, N.J., 1976.Google Scholar

2 cf. Shapin, S., ‘Property, patronage, and the politics of science: the founding of the Royal Society of Edinburgh’, The British journal for the history of science, 1974, 7, 1–41CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; and ‘The audience for science in eighteenth-century Edinburgh’, History of science, 1974, 12, 95–121 (96).Google Scholar

3 The records, minute books, papers, membership lists, and other documents and objects belonging to the Society in this period are lost. This reconstruction has been based on scattered printed materials, the surviving correspondence of members, and five volumes of papers published by the Society between 1742 and 1771.

4 The best account of the Society is contained in Shapin, S., ‘The Royal Society of Edinburgh: a study of the social context of Hanoverian science’, University of Pennsylvania PhD dissertation, 1971, pp. 91–128.Google Scholar This contains references to earlier comments on the Society.

5 Ibid., p. 97.

6 Boyes, J., ‘Sir Robert Sibbald: a neglected scholar’Google Scholar, in Anderson, and Simpson, , op cit. (1), p. 21.Google Scholar

7 Hoppen, K. T., The common scientist in the seventeenth century: a study of the Dublin Philosophical Society, 1683–1708, London, 1970, pp. 211–12Google Scholar; Gunther, R. T., Early science in Oxford, Oxford, 1920–45Google Scholar; reprinted London, 1968, iv, 120; xii, 249–50, 253.

8 Hoppen, , op. cit. (7), pp. 23, 210.Google Scholar

9 Gunther does not record correspondence between the Oxford Philosophical Society and virtuosi in Edinburgh but the Oxford men were aware of the activities of Sibbald and Sir George MacKenzie, and gave a copy of their Aristarchus to all the Scottish universities in 1688. Sir George became a member of the Oxford Philosophical Society after the Glorious Revolution, on 3 April 1690. Gunther, , op. cit. (7), iv, 157, 253, 272; xii, 217.Google Scholar

10 Shapin, , op. cit. (4), p. 51.Google Scholar Robert Wodrow's correspondence suggests that there was by 1700 a well defined group in Edinburgh which combined antiquarian and natural philosophical interests. Among its members were Sibbald, James Sutherland, James Paterson, and Sir Alexander Seton. cf. Sharp, L. W. (ed.), Early letters of Robert Wodrow, Edinburgh, 1937, passim.Google Scholar

11 Smellie, William, Account of the institution and progress of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, Edinburgh, 1782, p. 12.Google Scholar

12 Sharp, , op. cit. (10), p. 262.Google Scholar Wodrow wrote of this ‘Society of Antiquarys’: ‘Its the concern of our nation to have it continoued & I wish the ensueing Parliament would take nottice of & encourage it’. Parliament some years later did promise to subsidize the work of James Anderson.

13 Smellie, , loc. cit.Google Scholar; Duncan, Douglas, Thomas Ruddiman, Edinburgh & London, 1965, pp. 123–5.Google Scholar

14 Ibid. Duncan's book and his earlier PhD thesis, Thomas Ruddiman: a study of a Scottish scholar, Aberdeen University, 1961, also contain information on the circle of Dr Archibald Pitcairne whose virtuoso and patriotic interests paralleled those of Sibbald.

15 Duncan, , op. cit. (13), pp. 146 fGoogle Scholar; Chalmers, George, The life of Thomas Ruddiman, London, 1794, pp. 83 fGoogle Scholar; McElroy, D. D., ‘Literary clubs and societies of eighteenth-century Scotland’, Edinburgh University PhD thesis, 1952.Google Scholar McElroy's thesis has valuable information on most Scottish clubs of the period.

16 Chalmers, , op. cit. (15), pp. 74–8.Google Scholar Chalmers listed as members James Anderson, Writer to the Signet, Professors William Hamilton, Adam Watt, Charles Mackie, and Robert Stewart, the Reverend James Smith and George Logan, Sir Archibald Stewart, advocate ‘with manyothers of inferior note’. Among the last were two Glasgow men, Matthew Crawford and Robert Wodrow. See Wodrow, Robert, Analecta: or materials for a history of remarkable providences, Edinburgh, 1842, ii, 142.Google Scholar

17 McElroy quotes Lord Kames's opinion that ‘their topicks were chiefly religious and the only property they had in common was a Bible’. He also cites the 1771 opinion of George Wallace: ‘Its object was mutual improvement by liberal conversation and rational enquiry; its influence was not confined to the individuals of whom it consisted. It is well known that the RANKENIANS were highly influential in disseminating through Scotland, freedom of thought, boldness of disquisition, liberality of sentiment, accuracy of reasoning, correctness of taste and attention to composition; and that the exalted rank which Scotsman hold at present in the republic of letters, is greatly owing to the manner and the spirit begun by that society’, op. cit. (15), i, 63–71; Wodrow, , op. cit. (16), iii, 175, 178Google Scholar; Bower, Alexander, The history of the University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, 1817–1830, ii, 301–2Google Scholar; Ross, Ian S., Lord Kames and the Scotland of his day, Oxford, 1972, pp. 69–71, 250, 372n.Google Scholar It has not usually been noticed that most of the ministers in the Society wrote something against deism.

18 The Society of Improvers has not received the attention it deserves. The best discussion of improvers is still that of Smout, T. C. in A history of the Scottish people, 1560–1830, 2nd edn., London, 1970, pp. 291–301.Google Scholar Smout's notes are a guide to the extant literature on the Society which did publish one volume of Select transactions of the Honourable the Society of Improvers in the Knowledge of Agriculture… directing the husbandry… with an account of the Society's endeavours to promote our manufactures, Edinburgh, 1743.

19 Johnson, David, Music and society in lowland Scotland in the eighteenth century, London, 1972, pp. 33–63.Google Scholar

20 Shapin, , op. cit. (4), pp. 80–91.Google Scholar

21 Gray, James, History of the Royal Medical Society, 1737–1937, Edinburgh, 1952Google Scholar; Donovan, , op. cit. (1), pp. 40–1.Google Scholar

22 Erlam, H. D., ‘Alexander Monro, primus’, University of Edinburgh journal, 1955, 17, 77–105 (87–8).Google Scholar

23 Ibid.

24 Medical essays and observations (hereafter cited as ME), Edinburgh, 1733, pp. v–xxiv (Preface).Google Scholar

25 Ibid., pp. xi–xii.

26 Each of the last five volumes contains papers dating from the issuance of the first collection. Because Monro selected papers from his correspondence, a larger or denser network of medical correspondence in Britain and Ireland is implied that one might infer from a list of the contributors. The influence of the Society upon medical thinking may have been greater than has been suspected.

27 Erlam, , op. cit. (22), p. 88.Google Scholar

28 There were five editions of ME: 1733–1744, 1737 (1737–8 ‘corrected’), 1747 ‘revised and enlarged’, and 1752. Translations appeared in French (editions in 1733–44, 1740–47) Dutch (1739–41), Italian (1751–62) and portions of ME appeared in German (1749).

29 ME, i, p. x: ‘Both these at least labour under the Disadvantages common to all foreign observators. The first seems to be wholly composed by the Publisher, without Assistance or very exact Memoirs from any Friends; and the second is in a Language, (the High-Dutch) very little understood by the British, and contains many Papers foreign to the immediate Improvement of Physick’.

30 Ibid., pp. iii–iv.

31 Erlam, , op. cit. (22), p. 87.Google Scholar

32 Ibid., p. 88.

33 See the membership list appended to these notes.

34 See ‘Academy’ in the Encyclopaedia britannica, 1st edn., Edinburgh, 1771Google Scholar, for a list of those best known to the Scots.

35 Mornet, Daniel, Les origines intellectuelles de la révolution française, 6th edn., Paris, 1967, pp. 289–318Google Scholar; Roche, Daniel, ‘Milieux academiques provinciaux et société des lumières: trois académies provinciales au 18e siècle: Bordeaux, Dijon, Châlons sur Marne’ in Livre et socété dans la France du XVIIIe siècle (Paris & La Haye, 1965), pp. 93–184Google Scholar; Roche has a prosopographical study of French academicians forthcoming; Emerson, Roger L., ‘The Enlightenment & social structures’, in Fritz, P. and Williams, D. (eds.), City & society in the 18th Century, Toronto, 1973, pp. 99–124.Google Scholar

36 Excellent examples of these attitudes are provided by the Bordeaux Academy as discussed in Roche, , op. cit. (35)Google Scholar; Barrière, P., L'Académie de Bordeaux, Paris, 1956Google Scholar; Pariset, F.-G. (ed.), Histoire de Bordeaux, vol. v: Bordeaux au XVIIIe siècle, Bordeaux, 1968Google Scholar; and by one of its most notable members—Montesquieu, ‘Discours sur les motifs qui doivent nous encourager aux sciences’, in Oeuvres complètes de Montesquieu, Paris, 1949, i, 53–7.Google Scholar This and many of his other academic discourses would not have been out of place in the Edinburgh Philosophical Society.

37 ‘A collection of the observations of the solar eclipse’ (18 February 1737), in Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London, 1741, 40.Google Scholar

38 MacLaurin, Colin to SirClerk, John, 5 05 1737Google Scholar, Clerk of Penicuik MSS, Scottish Record Office [SRO] MS, GD18/5097/1.

39 A friend's epitaph for Bayne read: ‘A Man of an Elegant taste/And polite style: /Who had the Art of tempering the Severities of his harder Studies/ With the Soothing Gayeties of the gentlemanny (sic) Amusements, /Sometimes with Mechanical Operations, Sometimes with Painting, /But chiefly with Musick, wherein he greatly excelled’. ‘Francis Pringle's commonplace book’, St Andrews University Muniments (hereafter SAUM), MS LF1111P8C99. Astronomy, though a ‘Mechanical Operation’, had become polite and genteel.

40 Tweedie, Charles, James Stirling: a sketch of his life and works along with his scientific correspondence, Oxford, 1922Google Scholar; see also the forthcoming Harvard University PhD dissertation on Colin MacLaurin by Joseph Chillington.

41 St Andrews University Minutes, vol. iv, 13 12 1736.Google Scholar The University paid about £25 for a telescope just over eighteen inches, and described as very good.

42 The account of MacLaurin in Biographia britannica (1747–1766), v, London, 1760; reprinted Hildesheim, 1969, note R, says that ‘the city magistrates were frequently applied to for their assistance’ in building an observatory ‘especially in the year 1736, when it was almost agreed to’. The note concluded: ‘We see the design was first started in 1736, and very possibly might take it's rise from the annular eclipse of the sun at Edinburgh, which happened the 18th of February that year, and was not only carefully observed there by himself, but he also invited and encouraged others every where to do the like, herein copying the example of Dr. Halley [See this article, remark (181,) at the end; and Phil. Trans. No. 447], in regard to the like eclipse which happened in 1715’.

43 Lord Aberdour (later the 14th Earl of Morton, PRS), Lord Hope (later the 2nd Earl of Hopetoun), Sir John Clerk, William Crow, James Gray, William Fullarton, James Stirling, Robert Simson, and MacLaurin. See ‘Two original letters from Professor Mac-Laurin to his friend Dr. Johnston, Professor of Medicine in the University of Glasgow, giving an account of the institution of the Physical Society of Edinburgh in 1737–8’, Scots magazine, 1804, 66, 421–3 (421–2).Google Scholar

44 MacLaurin, , loc. cit. (38).Google Scholar

45 MacLaurin, , loc. cit. (43).Google Scholar

46 The Proposals exists in what may be a unique copy at the National Library of Scotland [NLS]. It was reprinted in Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh: General index to the first thirty-four volumes (1783–1888), Edinburgh, 1890, pp. 22–6.Google Scholar The ‘History of the Society’ contained in this volume is unreliable for the period 1737–1783.

47 Proposals, p. 1.Google Scholar

48 See for example, Chitnis, , op. cit. (1), p. 198.Google Scholar

49 Proposals, pp. 2, 10.Google Scholar

50 MacLaurin, , loc. cit. (43), p. 421.Google Scholar

51 Proposals, p. 2.Google Scholar

52 Ibid., p. 2.

53 Ibid., pp. 2, 10, 8, 7, 5.

54 Ibid., p. 3.

55 It is appended to the Proposals.

56 Proposals, p. 6.Google Scholar No names of designated correspondents are known.

57 Ibid.

58 Ibid., p. 2.

59 Ibid., pp. 8–9.

60 Ibid., p. 12.

61 Ibid., pp. 4, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11.

62 Ibid. pp. 7, 11.

63 MacLaurin, , loc. cit. (43), p. 421.Google Scholar ‘A plan… was read, and after some alterations, was approved’. See also: Maitland, William, History of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, 1753, p. 355Google Scholar; David, to Skene, Andrew, 8 12 1751Google Scholar, David Skene Correspondence, Aberdeen University Library [AUL], MS 38; Monro, Alexander, secundus, Essays and heads of lectures… with a memoir of his life…, Edinburgh, 1860, p. 107Google Scholar; Greig, J. Y. T., The letters of David Hume, Oxford, 1932 and 1969, p. 357Google Scholar; Alexander Monro and David Hume to Robert Whytt (date missing, c. 1760), in Robert Whytt MSS, Edinburgh University Library [EUL], MS DC. 4.98; Clerk, David to Cullen, William, 23 01 1754Google Scholar, Thomson/Cullen MSS, Correspondence, Glasgow University Library [GUL]; Cullen to ?, 1760 in Thomson, John, An account of the life, letters, and writings of William Cullen, M.D., 2 vols., Edinburgh, 1832, 1859, i, 137.Google Scholar

64 Proposals, p. 12.Google Scholar

65 Ibid., p. 6.

66 Ibid., p. 11.

67 Ibid., p. 12.

68 Ibid., p. 6.

69 On Dr Clerk's career see an obituary address given by William Cullen in the Royal Infirmary 24 June 1757, GUL Cullen MSS III: 3. On the Edinburgh pharmacopoeia see Cowen, D. L., ‘The Edinburgh pharmacopoeia’Google Scholar, in Anderson, and Simpson, , op. cit. (1).Google Scholar

70 MacLaurin, , loc. cit. (43), p. 422.Google Scholar

71 Proposals, p. 4.Google Scholar

72 EUL D. B. Horn MSS, Box 1, ‘Anatomy’: ‘In 1738 a room possessed by Monro was at his own request granted to the Society for Improving Philosophical and Natural Knowledge “for placing of their repository of Natural Curiosity”.’ The room was granted by the Town Council upon the petition of Monro and Alexander Lind on 18 January 1738. Typescript excerpts of the Town Council Minutes are in the Horn MSS.

73 MacLaurin, Colin to Mitchell, Andrew, 5 02 1743Google Scholar, British Museum [BL] Add. MS. 6861, f 39. Transcripts of this and other MacLaurin letters exist at GUL in the John C. Eaton MSS.

74 Simson, Thomas, ‘An account of the ossified brain of a cow…’ in An inquiry how far the vital and animal actions of the more perfect animals can be accounted for independent of the brain, Edinburgh, 1752, pp. 259–70.Google Scholar

75 Biographia britannica, op. cit. (42), p. 3046 n.S.Google Scholar The undated published map of northern Scotland drawn by Alexander Bryce and dedicated to Lord Morton was probably published in 1743.

76 Scots magazine, 1743, 5, 385Google Scholar; see also the advertisements prefatory to the text.

77 e.g., Labaree, L. W. (ed.), The papers of Benjamin Franklin, New Haven, 1966, ix, 228Google Scholar; Robison, John to ?, 13 09 1785Google Scholar, EUL MS. La. III. 352.

78 MacLaurin, , loc. cit. (4).Google Scholar

79 Medical essays and observations, vol. v, part I, Edinburgh, 1742, p. iii.Google Scholar

80 Ibid.

81 Scots magazine, 1742, 4, 94.Google Scholar

82 MacLaurin, Colin, An account of Sir Isaac Newton's philosophical discoveries…, facsimile of the 1st edn., ed. by Laudan, L. L., New York & London, 1968, p. vii.Google Scholar

83 Draft or copy of an undated (probably 1739) letter from MacLaurin to Lord Morton, AUL MS. 206.58.

84 Clerk MSS, SRO GD18/5041/2, 3.

85 For Clerk's antiquarian activities see: Piggott, Stuart, Ruins in a landscape, Edinburgh, 1976, pp. 133–59Google Scholar; Brown, I. G., ‘Antiquarian Sir John’, Edinburgh University MA dissertation, 1972Google Scholar, and a forthcoming study of Clerk by Mr Brown.

86 Erlam, , loc. cit. (22), p. 88.Google Scholar

87 Essays and observations, physical and literary, Edinburgh, 1754, p. iii.Google Scholar

88 Ibid., pp. v–vii.

89 Maitland, , loc. cit. (63).Google Scholar

90 Ibid.

91 Scots magazine, 1771, 33, 342.Google Scholar

92 Christie, , op. cit. (1), p. 116.Google Scholar

93 The average age of 38 members in 1737 was 46.0 years with 45 the median age. The youngest members were James Short and Dougal Campbell, later HM Engineer for Scotland, both at 27.

94 Lords Morton and Hopetoun, Sir John Clerk, and Dougal Campbell provided scientific instruments, and Morton certainly bore the costs of the northern survey work.

95 Charles Erskine, Lord Advocate in 1737, was among those who skilfully managed the General Assembly for the Government in 1729. It was partly owing to his efforts that John Simpson, the heretical divinity professor at Glasgow, was not deprived, an action which the Government feared would cause a schism in the Established Church, cf. Erskine-Murray MSS, NLS MS. 5073, ff. 127–136.

96 Between 1727 and June 1783 the Musical Society is known to have had 694 members of whom 12% were merchants or writers; most were added to the roster after 1750. These figures are taken from the author's unpublished study of this Society.

97 By 1750 six, including three not counted above, had stock in the British Linen Company begun in 1743 and chartered in 1746.

98 Thirty-seven are known to have attended one or more Scottish or European university or college.

99 At least twenty-seven had spent time on the continent before 1740, usually in France and the low countries.

100 Dr John Stewart could have called himself Sir John but, like his father Robert, he never assumed the title. None of the new men had interests in mines, which may account for the diminished concern with mining shown by the Society after 1747. They also appear to have had less involvement in commercial activities.

101 Lord Elphinstone, Lord Hopetoun, Charles Sinclair, Sir John Anstruther, Sir John Clerk, William Adam, Charles Erskine, Alexander Lind, and James Stirling all had a connexion with mining and its practical problems. Elphinstone and Clerk were knowledgeable enough to be cited for their technical abilities by Duckham, Baron F. in A history of the Scottish coal industry, Vol. i: 1700–1815, Newton Abbot, 1970.Google Scholar

102 Elphinstone and Charles Dundas of Dundas were ‘general overseers for the Bo'ness mines of the 5th Duke of Hamilton’ and in 1738 were interested in mine pumps. Ibid., p. 78. In the same year Elphinstone sent to the Society an account of experiments with ‘a new invented Engine, for Raising any quantety of water from Coal or lead mines’. This was accompanied by ‘a Rude Scetch in a perspective’ and the estimate that his pump ‘will be erected £300 starling cheaper than a Fire Enig. and will save £200 Annual Charge off five servants wadges tear and wear off Boyler pluman work etc.’. Elphinstone, Lord to ? MacLaurin, Colin, 3 01 1738Google Scholar, AUL MS. 206.34.

103 Alexander Lind was receiving peat samples from Lord Hay at least by 1742 to establish their richness in ‘Lixeival salt etc.’. Similar experiments in 1749 seem related to attempts to make china and ‘Delf Pottery’, and to bleaching processes. Lind, to Ilay, Lord, 24 07 1742Google Scholar; Lind, to Milton, Lord, 10 05 1749Google Scholar, Saltoun Papers, NLS MSS. SC.87, SC.164.

104 Charles Mackie, Sir John Clerk, Robert Wallace, Thomas Ruddiman, and Charles Erskine must be included here.

105 Shapin, , op. cit. (4), p. 90–1.Google Scholar

106 Here must be included some astronomical papers in the Philosophical transactions by Morton and James Short, and Wallace, Robert's Dissertation on the numbers of mankind in ancient and modern times, Edinburgh, 1753.Google Scholar

107 These can be compared with the répartition des activites par catégorie compiled by Roche for Bordeaux 1715–1791, Dijon 1741–1794, and Châlons, 1775–1972; op. cit. (35), p. 163.Google Scholar

108 MacLaurin, , op. cit. (82), p. vii.Google Scholar The following sections from the Treatise of fluxions may be referred to there: 628, 641, 642, 648, 655, 660, 682–686, 874, 900, 907, 908 and 914–923. From the Account the Society might have heard presented: Book II, chapter III, 2–9, 24 30; Book IV, chapters V and VI. The following papers printed in the Philosophical transactions may have had their first airing in Edinburgh: 1739–41, 41, 808–9; 1742–3, 42, 325–63; 403–15; 565–71.

109 Mackie, Charles, ‘On the sources of vulgar errors in history and how to detect and verify them’, Laing MSS, EUL MS. La.II. 37.10; Philosophical transactions, 1742–1743, 42, 420–1.Google Scholar

110 Ibid., 1739–41, 41, 91–7; 633; 646–9.

111 Ibid., 1744–5, 43, 315–17.

112 Clerk/s surviving papers for the Philosophical Society include: ‘Ane account of some Roman antiquities observed at Bulness’, SRO GD 18/5051; ‘A dissertation on coal’, SRO GD 18/1069; ? ‘A trip into England’, SRO GD 18/2116; ‘An essay on the antient languages of Great Britain’, SOR GD 18/5100/2 and EUL MS. La.352.4; ? ‘Memorial concerning mines in Scotland’, SRO GD 18/1144. SRO GD 18/5912/2, 5059, 5912/3, 5060/2, include correspondence read or discussed at the Society meetings.

113 Lind, Alexander, ‘Of the analysis and uses of peat’, in Essays and observations (hereafter cited as EOPL), ii (1756), pp. 226–42.Google Scholar

114 Loc. cit. (74).

115 Clerk MSS. SRO GD 18/5060/1. The Society clearly had registers of the weather, as had the Medical Society.

116 MacLaurin MSS, AUL MS. 34.13.

117 ME and EOPL contain papers read before the Society in this decade. In the former, numbers 12, 13, 18, 27, 30, 31, 33, 35, 37, 41, 51, 52, 64, 65, 69, 70 and 77 of vol. v can probably all be claimed for the Society's ‘Repository’. In the latter, numbers 5, 10, 11, 15 in vol. i, and essays 10, 12, 18, 24 in vol. ii seem to date from before 1747.

118 ME, vol. v, No. 77.

119 Ibid., No. 69.

120 Ibid., No. 30.

121 French, R. K., Robert Whytt, the soul, and medicine, London, 1969, p. 6.Google Scholar

122 ME, v, No. 51; This was a topic of current interest; see Scots magazine 1739, 1, 571.Google Scholar

123 MacLaurin MSS, AUL MS. 206.61/62.

124 EOPL, i, Nos. 10 and 11.

125 On 21 August 1742 Clairaut wrote to MacLaurin about Trembley's polyps and Réaumur's observations of them. This letter would certainly have been read to the Society before 18 November when a report on these curiosities was read to the Royal Society. AUL MS. 206.50. On 10 January 1744 MacLaurin wrote to Martin Folkes that Lord Hopetoun ‘has tried several experiments with the polipus successfully’. Monro's notice of Trembley' work in the ME (v, part II, pp. 927–31) suggests that Hopetoun had been watching them feed and reproduce and that he had perhaps succeeded in cutting them up or turning them inside out. Library of the Royal Society of London, MS. Fo. 4.11.

126 Alston, Charles's Index plantarum praecipue officinalum quae in horto medico Edinburgensis, Edinburgh, 1740Google Scholar, was being prepared during the Society's early years.

127 Alexander Monro noted that in his suppers with Dr John Clerk, Lord President Forbes, and MacLaurin, , ‘Newton, Leibnitz, Clerk and most of the Philosophers were attacked and defended’; op. cit. (22), p. 103.Google Scholar Attacks on Newton's philosophy came from Forbes, whose views are discussed by Kuhn, A. J. in ‘Glory or gravity: Hutchinson vs. Newton’, Journal of the history of ideas, 1961, 22, 303–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For an account of disagreements over Newtonianism between MacLaurin and George Martine see Schofield, Robert E., Mechanism and materialism, Princeton, 1970, pp. 107–8.Google Scholar Sir John Clerk too was critical of Newton and of ‘Modern Mathematicians [who] ascribe to much to the power of gravity & do not speak of the almighty power of God as they ought’. Clerk MSS, SRO GD 18/5099/3.

128 Marline, George's Essays medical and philosophical, London, 1740Google Scholar, probably contains some papers read to the Society. One of these essays was reprinted as Essays and observations on the construction and graduation of thermometers and upon the heating and cooling of bodies, Edinburgh, 1772.Google Scholar This was translated into French with a dedication to the ‘Académie des belles Lettres, Science & Arts de Bordeaux’ in 1751. John Rutherford's interest in heat and thermometry also dates from this period: ME, v. No. 77; Wolf, A., A history of science, technology & philosophy, 2nd edn., New York, 1961, i, 317–8.Google Scholar Around 1740 William Crow was also experimenting with thermometers. MacLaurin MSS, AUL MS. 206.54.

129 William Crow's work on water-flow rates in rivers mentions books by Castelli, Bernoulli, Mariotte and S'Gravesande; MacLaurin MSS, AUL MS. 206.56. His experiments were nearly contemporary with those of Henri Pitot in France.

130 From the early 1700s, Jacques Cassini and others in the Académie des Sciences had been surveying and mapping France and its coastlines.

131 Greig, , op. cit. (63), i, 177.Google Scholar

132 Ruddiman, Thomas's An introduction to James Anderson's Diplomata Scotiae, Edinburgh, 1739Google Scholar, was written with a patriotic awareness of these controversies, and with an eye to French work in diplomatics. See also Piggot, , op. cit. (85), pp. 55–76.Google Scholar

133 Despite John Adair's cartographic work in the 1680s, no complete Scottish atlas improving on Johan Blaeu's of 1654 appeared until 1807, when William Roy's military survey (finished in 1755) was finally printed. Detailed county and regional maps were produced, including three by men with connexions in the Philosophical Society: Alexander Bryce (northern Scotland), _____________ Mackenzie (the Orkneys), and John Elphinstone (the Lothians and Highlands).

134 Clerk MSS, SRO GD 18/5912, 5907/7, 5102/1, 2; Laudan, , op. cit. (82), p. ix.Google Scholar

135 Ibid., GD 18/5912.

136 MacLaurin MSS, AUL MS. 206.56.

137 Clerk MSS, SRO GD 18/5851/1, 2.

138 Ibid., GD 18/1067, 5097/7; MacLaurin MSS, AUL MS. 206.53.

139 Loc. cit. (102).

140 Clerk MSS, SRO GD 18/1081.

141 Sir John's ‘Memorial concerning mines in Scotland’, SRO GD 18/1144, was probably read to the Society in February or March 1743. The decision to ‘examine at our charge any minerals or ores that should be sent us from the country and to give a report of the value’ is likely to have followed from discussions of this paper. There were commotions involving lead mines in the Western Highlands in 1742 3, which Clerk wished to end once and for all, as the Memorial makes clear.

142 ‘We in Scotland have no doubt, Since the Union of the Crouns. been endeavouring to pollish our Language at least to make it more conformable to our Neighbours in England but if any body will take the trouble to read blind Hary's Life of Sr William Wallace or Bishop Gavin Douglasse's Virgil they will discover many Words that have a great deal more beauty & energy in them than those we find in our present Poetry’. Sir John Clerk, Clerk MSS, SRO GD 18/5100/2/24.

143 Innes, Thomas, A critical essay on the ancient inhabitants of the northern parts of Britain, London, 1729.Google Scholar Innes's work was the first Scottish history to employ the diplomatic analyses developed by French scholars.

144 Edinburgh Town Council Minutes, 17 March 1740; Laudan, , op. cit. (82), p. viiiGoogle Scholar; Bower, Alexander, op. cit. (17), ii, 249.Google Scholar

145 MacLaurin MSS, AUL MS. 34.14. In his directions to the members of the northern survey party, MacLaurin asked them to look for this phenomenon; AUL MS. 206.58.

146 ME, v, no. 35.

147 Philosophical transactions, 1742–1743, 42, 420–1.Google Scholar

148 Clerk MSS, SRO GD 18/5912/1–3.

149 Philosophical transactions, 1742–1743, 42, 565–71.Google Scholar

150 Martine, George, op. cit. (128), p. 133.Google Scholar Similar ideas are touched upon in MacLaurin's Account; in Forbes, 's A letter to a bishop concerning some important discoveries in philosophy and theology, n.p., 1732Google Scholar, and Reflexions on incredulity, Edinburgh, 1752Google Scholar; in The works of Robert Whytt, Edinburgh, 1768Google Scholar; and in the manuscripts of Sir John Clerk (e.g., SRO GD 18/5099), Alexander Monro (e.g., in Erlam, , loc. cit. (22))Google Scholar, and Robert Wallace (EUL MS. La. II. 94.4).

151 EOPL, i, pp. iii–v.

152 Clerk MSS, SRO GD 18/5107.

153 Clairaut may have been one of the Society's correspondents. Others might have included John Fothergill, William Stukeley, George Mark, Roger Gale and Maurice Johnson.

154 Emerson, R. L., ‘The social composition of enlightened Scotland: the Select Society of Edinburgh’, Studies on Voltaire and the eighteenth century, 1973, 114, 291–329.Google Scholar