Christian Enlightenment: From Philadelphia to Charles Town

Christian Enlightenment: From Philadelphia to Charles Town

In the 18th century, Scotland witnessed an explosion of intellectual and scientific accomplishments, which was called as the Scottish Enlightenment. Among the Scottish luminaries, there were David Hume, Adam Smith, Hugh Blair, William Robertson, Adam Ferguson, Lord Kames, William Cullen, Thomas Reid, Francis Hutchison, James Boswell, Robert Burns and so on. Although they shared the rationalist outlook as the continental Enlightenment thinkers, they emphasized the significance of human reason combined with questioning authority. Guided by reason and empiricism, they optimistically believed in the potentiality of human beings to exert their capabilities to improve the society. The Scottish Enlightenment had a great impact on the world, which was beyond Scotland itself. It not only influenced Europe, but transmitted its ideas and achievements to North America by the Scottish diaspora, as well as the American students who went for learning in Scotland. In North America, it produced no David Hume or Adam Smith, but in Jonathan Edwards and Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, John Adams, Benjamin Rush, James Wilson, Benjamin West and other well-known characters it boasted men of impressive accomplishment.

In the second half of the 18th century, Philadelphia was closely connected with the Scottish Enlightenment. Under its influence, Philadelphia took part in the widespread American practice of sending medical students to Edinburgh, which made it an Empire of Reason. From 1750 to 1790, “at least 177 Americans studied at the Edinburgh Medical School. The enclave of Edinburgh graduates in Philadelphia provided a direct link to ideas flowing out of the Scottish Enlightenment.” In the Philadelphia circles, it included medical men such as Benjamin Rush and John Redman; ministers and dabblers in natural philosophy, such as Francis Alison and John Ewing, the botanists John and William Bartram, and Ebenezer Kinnersley, Baptist minister and electrical experimenter. These Philadelphia thinkers were thoroughly enlightened and believed that reason and the proper scientific method would spring progressive ideas.