Great Scot!!! - Which one had the greatest impact on the World?

Burns, Baird, R.L.Stevenson, Duns Scotus, Michael Scott, David Lyndsay, Robert Henryson, William Dunbar, John Buchan, James Hogg, the monumental Walter Scott, Thomas Carlyle, Francis Hutcheson, William Robertson, Adam Ferguson, James MacPherson (Ossian), Lord Kames, the legendary Adam Smith, the superlative David Hume, not to mention the scientists and inventors such as Alexander Graham Bell, James Watt, Kirkpatrick MacMillan, Alexander Fleming, James Clerk Maxwell, John Napier, Lord Kelvin and James Hutton. Politicians like Ramsay MacDonald, Keir Hardie, Sir John Alexander Macdonald (1st PM of Canada), and many others. Explorers and missionaries like David Livingston, Mungo Park and Sir Alexander Mackenzie.
These are just a few great Scots who had a massive impact on the world. Without these men, there would be no social sciences, no Marxism (Scottish Enlightenment historiography), no televsion, no telephone, no industrial revolution nor many other important things in the modern world. Or at any rate, these things would not have happened as quickly.

Voltaire said at the height of the Enlightenment that "we all look to Scotland for all our ideas of civilization." He acknowledged what too many people nowadays forget, Scotland was not only important in its own right as a civilization, it was one of the most important.

Churchill opnce said, " Off all the small nations of this earth, perhaps only the ancient Greeks surpass the Scots in their contribution to mankind. "

Anyhoo, this thread's not just someone in Scotland trying to show off; many larger nations have produced greater men in larger numbers. But I've got to write an article on the subject, so I'm looking for good analysis.

John Logie Baird - Inventor of Television

Born in 1888 in Helensburgh, Scotland, Baird learned a Calvinist work ethic from his father, a Presbyterian minister. Not inclined toward the clergy or the sea, Baird realized he could do little to support himself in his homeland. Like so many other young Scots of his era, he eventually sought his fortune in London, though some of his early, highly significant research was conducted on the south coast of England.
John Logie Baird is remembered as the inventor of mechanical television, radar and fiber optics. Successfully tested in a laboratory in late 1925 and unveiled with much fanfare in London in early 1926, mechanical television technology was quickly usurped by electronic television, the basis of modern video technology. Nonetheless, Baird's achievements, including making the first trans-Atlantic television transmission, were singular and critical scientific accomplishments. Lonely, driven, tireless and often poor, the native Scot defined the pioneering spirit of scientific inquiry.
During his long career, John Baird created a host of television technologies. Among them, phonovision, a forerunner of the video recorder (which largely still relies on mechanical scanning); noctovision, an infra-red spotting system for "seeing" in the dark; open-air television, a theater-projection system; stereoscopic color TV; and the first high definition color TV. According to present-day TV historians, Baird only pursued mechanical scanning to get a television system working as quickly as possible. He changed to electronic scanning in the early 1930s and refined the system to a high degree. Before he died in 1946, Baird was drafting plans for a television with 1,000 lines of resolution and he had earlier patents for television with up to 1,700 lines of resolution using interlacing technology. The world would not catch up with him until 1990 when the Japanese introduced a TV with 1125 lines of resolution per frame.

Alexander Graham Bell - Inventor of Telephone

Best known as the inventor of the telephone (1876).

Alexander Bell (The Graham was only added when he reached the age of 11) was born in Edinburgh to a family reknowned in the fields of elocution and speech correction. He attended Edinburgh Royal High School, Edinburgh University and University College London. He then sought a career in teaching in Elgin, where he conducted his first experiments in sound transmittance.

After his two brothers tragically died of tuberculosis, Bell moved his family to Canada, carrying on his father’s lectures in the United States, and establishing a name for himself on the academic circuits. He demonstrated that speech could be taught to the deaf, and he became professor of vocal physiology at Boston University.

It was here that Bell discovered the means by which sound could be transmitted by wire, and where he drew up the first specifications for the telephone. As he patented his new device, he was the subject of one of the earliest litigious battles with Western Union Telegraph Company, however, Bell was eventually recognized as the inventor of the undulatory current. His other inventions included the graphophone, and continued his endeavours in teaching the deaf – his most notable patient and inspiration was Helen Keller.

Bell was made president of the National Geographic Periodical in 1898, taking the small pamphlet into a global magazine, and continued his experiments. He registered 30 patents in his lifetime, 14 for the telephone and telegraph, 4 for the photophone, 1 for the phongraph, 5 for aerial vehicles, 4 for hydroairplanes, and two for a selenium cell.

Alexander Fleming - "Invented" Penicillin

Alexander Fleming was born on a farm in Scotland in 1881. He moved from Scotland to London. He fought in a war that took place in South Africa. Sir Alexander Fleming was the inventor of penicillin. He discovered penicillin in the year, 1928. He was a bacteriologist. He came up with penicillin when he was trying find a way to kill bacteria. Before he discovered penicillin he came up with lysozyme, a sobstance that kills the germs that aren't very serious and do not cause diseases. Alexander Fleming found out about penicillin accidently. When Alexander Fleming first saw penicillin it did not look like the medicine we have these days, it looked like some blue mold. Fleming knew it could be a kind of medicine because he noticed that around the mold the bacteria had disolved. The blue mold that Alexander Fleming saw in his dish destroying bacteria was penicillin. Penicillin was completed in 1940, by some other scientists in Britain. After penicillin was completed, Alexander Fleming collected 25 honorary degrees, 26 metals, 18 prizes, 13 decorations, a membership in 87 scientific academies and societies. He was knighted in 1944, then in 1945 he received the Noble prize for physiology or medicine.
Penicillin was the first antibiotic drug and it was first used to cure soldiers in World War II. Penicillin is almost completely harmless, even in large doses. But the present for of penicillin has changed greatly because bacteria has made antibodies against this medicine. Alexander Fleming died in 1955.

David Hume – Philosophic Sceptic

Scottish philosopher, historian, and essayist. Hume is the most influentual thoroughgoing naturalist in modern philosophy, and a pivotal figure of the Enlightenment, who criticized theories of causality and emphasized the empirical and probabilistic nature of knowledge about the physical world. He questioned cause and effect and viewed knowledge as beliefs based on psychological factors, since a single experiment was capable of disproving an entire theory.. Born the second son of a minor Scottish landowner, Hume attended Edinburgh University. In 1734 he removed to Anjou to write and study. In 1739 he returned to Britain. Hume settled down to a life of literary work, mainly residing in Edinburgh. During this time his reputation slowly grew until he became acknowledged as one of Britain's principal men of letters. In 1763 he was appointed Secretary to the Embassy and later charge d'affaires in Paris, and during this period enjoyed unprecedented fame and adulation as one of the principal architects of the Enlightment. In 1766 Hume accompanied Rousseau to England, but the trip ended with paranoid complaints of persecution by Rousseau, against which Hume defended himself with dignity. Adam Smith wrote of Hume that "upon the whole, I have always considered him, both in his life-time and since his death, as approaching as nearly to the idea of a perfectly wise and virtous man, as perhaps the nature of human frailty will admit". Hume’s scepticism produced a challenge to the human concept of causation which has never been answered, and can never be answered until someone proves that causal relations are necessary ones.


James Hutton - The father of Geology"

"The father of modern geology," as the Edinburgh-born Hutton is often known, studied medicine both on the continent and in Edinburgh . In Theory of the Earth with Proofs and Illustrations (1795), Hutton became the first to show that, in general, the Earth changes slowly and uniformly by the same processes which are occurring today. Hutton did not have as much impact as he might have had, as a result of his cumbersome and difficult literary style. Hutton's idea became known as the Uniformitarian Principle, and served as an alternative to Catastrophism. Hutton believed that volcanic processes were the chief agent in rock formation (amounting to a rudimentary concept of a rock cycle), thus representing the Vulcanist (or Plutonist) view, in contrast to men such as Werner who supported the Neptunist view.

King James VI (1567–1625) -.King of Scotland and England

king of England (1603–25) and, as James VI, of Scotland (1567–1625). Born in Edinburgh Castle, the son of the Catholic Mary Queen of Scots, but brought up as a Protestant. James became King of Scotland on the forced abdication of his mother in 1567, when he was just one year old. A series of Regents ruled in his name (the Earls of Moray, Lennox, Mar and Morton respectively) until James reached majority. He took time to assert his authority over the nobility, who had become used to wielding power.
James married Anne of Denmark in 1589, but it was not a happy marriage and they lived apart from the early years of the 17th century.
In 1603, on the death of Queen Elizabeth I, he acceded to the English throne as James I. This came about because his great-grandmother was Margaret Tudor, daughter of Henry VII of England. Although this "Union of the Crowns" resulted in James being King of both countries, the countries remained constitutionally separate for another 104 years. James moved to Whitehall Palace in London with his court, who settled around the palace in an area which became known as 'Scotland Yard'.
James' inconsistent attitude towards Catholicism gave rise to much criticism, and the famous Gunpowder Plot. He is also remembered for the translation of the Bible which became known as the authorised or King James version. James's reign witnessed the beginnings of English colonization in North America (Jamestown was founded in 1607) and the plantation of Scottish settlers in Ulster.



Lord Kelvin – Physicist, Mathematician, etc

Scottish mathematician and physicist who contributed to many branches of physics. He was known for his self-confidence, and as an undergraduate at Cambridge he thought himself the sure "Senior Wrangler" (the name given to the student who scored highest on the Cambridge mathematical Tripos exam). After taking the exam he asked his servant, "Oh, just run down to the Senate House, will you, and see who is Second Wrangler." The servant returned and informed him, "You, sir!" (Campbell and Higgens, p. 98, 1984). Another example of his hubris is provided by his 1895 statement "heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible" (Australian Institute of Physics), followed by his 1896 statement, "I have not the smallest molecule of faith in aerial navigation other than ballooning...I would not care to be a member of the Aeronautical Society." Kelvin is also known for an address to an assemblage of physicists at the British Association for the advancement of Science in 1900 in which he stated, "There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now. All that remains is more and more precise measurement." A similar statement is attributed to the American physicist Albert Michelson.
Kelvin argued that the key issue in the interpretation of the Second Law of Thermodynamics was the explanation of irreversible processes. He noted that if entropy always increased, the universe would eventually reach a state of uniform temperature and maximum entropy from which it would not be possible to extract any work. He called this the Heat Death of the Universe. With Rankine he proposed a thermodynamical theory based on the primacy of the energy concept, on which he believed all physics should be based. He said the two laws of thermodynamics expressed the indestructibility and dissipation of energy. He also tried to demonstrate that the equipartition theorem was invalid.
Thomson also calculated the age of the earth from its cooling rate and concluded that it was too short to fit with Lyell's theory of gradual geological change or Charles Darwin's theory of the evolution of animals though natural selection. He used the field concept to explain electromagnetic interactions. He speculated that electromagnetic forces were propagated as linear and rotational strains in an elastic solid, producing "vortex atoms" which generated the field. He proposed that these atoms consisted of tiny knotted strings, and the type of knot determined the type of atom. This led Tait to study the properties of knots. Kelvin's theory said ether behaved like an elastic sold when light waves propagated through it. He equated ether with the cellular structure of minute gyrostats. With Tait, Kelvin published Treatise on Natural Philosophy (1867), which was important for establishing energy within the structure of the theory of mechanics. (It was later republished under the title Principles of Mechanics and Dynamics by Dover Publications).


John Knox - Presbyterian Founder

John Knox (1505-1572) was ordained a priest in the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland. When Knox's close friend George Wiseheart was burned at the stake by Cardinal Beaton he swore himself an enemy of the Roman Catholic Church. Two years later, Beaton was assassinated by "parties unknown."

After arriving in Edinburgh Knox soon had a growing group of followers. He traveled to Geneva three times to study under Calvin who had a high regard for the young Scotsman. Knox bore a terrible hatred toward Mary Queen of Scots' mother, Mary of Guise, and yet they met and in the meeting Mary tried converting Knox back to Roman Catholicism with bribes of political power.

In response to Knox's prayers, Mary Queen of Scots is reputed to have said: "I fear the prayers of John Knox more than all the assembled armies of Europe." In response to the rising resistance of the Scottish Reformers, Mary fled Scotland and was later put to death by a court of English who had accused her of plotting to assassinate Elizabeth I. Knox was survived by the Scottish Covenanters, who drew up a compact in 1638 asserting their right, under God, to national sovereignty.

More important, however, was Knox's shaping of the democratic form of government that the church adopted, for it was a form later mirrored in the government of the state itself. Knox, thoroughly anglicized in speech and outlook, did much to extend English political and cultural influence in a land where the Gaelic religion and way of life were increasingly being pushed aside. As far as the Reformation is concerned, Knox's greatest work came as a pamphleteer. As G. Donaldson points out (in Daiches), almost one third of his History of the Reformation in Scotland consists of documents and his pre-eminence may be due more to his autobiography, History of His Own Times, than to his actual work in the field.

Irvine Welsh!

John Loudon MacAdam - Inventor of Tarmacadam

(1756 - 1836), McAdam’s discovery came about when he started repair and maintenance work on the roads round his estate, which he bought after returning to the United Kingdom after making his fortune in America.

He had gone to New York at the age of sixteen and became an "agent for prizes" - an official form of dealing in stolen goods!

Formal road construction started in Britain with the Romans who relied on heavy, carefully laid foundations to withstand the dual pressures of traffic and weather. The main difficulty with this system was that it was cumbersome to install and difficult to maintain.

McAdam's theory was that with a system of properly drained foundations bare, dry soil was strong enough to bear the weight of the type of traffic using the roads at that time. His system involved raising the road - bed with adequate drainage to carry away rainfall. He then concentrated on laying tightly packed layers of small stone which the weight of traffic using the road would help compact to a smooth surface.

This was a much cheaper way of developing and maintaining roads and other engineers quickly found ways to develop McAdam's early pioneering work. One of them, Richard Edgeworth used stone dust mixed with water to fill the gaps between the stones, thereby providing a much smoother surface

It was this "water bound Macadam" that was the forerunner of the bitumen based binding that was to become tarmacadam. The first tarmac road to be laid was in Paris in 1854. With the development of the automobile in the early twentieth century tarmac roads, or "black tops" came into common use.

James Ramsay MacDonald - First Labour Prime Minister
Ramsey MacDonald was educated at a board school and joined the Independent Labour Party in 1894. A member of London County Council (1901-04) and of Parliament from 1906, he became leader of the opposition in 1922 and, from January until November 1924, was Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary of the first Labour government in Britain - a minority government at the mercy of the Liberals. He became Prime Minister again from 1929 to 1931. The financial crisis of 1931 forced MacDonald to form a National government which, to the opposition of most of his party, was predominantly Conservative. Stanley Baldwin took over premiership in 1935 and MacDonald became Lord President. He died shortly after his retirement in 1937.

James MacPherson – “Translator” of the Ossianic Epic


Scottish " translator " of the Ossianic poems, was born at Ruthven in the parish of Kingussie, Inverness, on the 27th of October 1736. He was sent in 1753 to King's College, Aberdeen, removing two years later to Marischal College. He also studied at Edinburgh, but took no degree. He is said to have written over 4000 lines of . verse while a student, but though some of this was published, notably The Highlander (1758), he afterwards tried to suppress it. On leaving college he taught in the school of his native place. At Moffat he met John Home, the author of Douglas, for whom he recited some Gaelic verses from memory. He also showed him MSS. of Gaelic poetry, supposed to have been picked up in the Highlands, and, encouraged by Home and others, he produced a number of pieces translated from the Gaelic, which he was induced to publish at Edinburgh in 1760 as Fragments of Ancient Poetry collected in the Highlands of Scotland. Dr Hugh Blair, who was a firm believer in the authenticity of the poems, got up a subscription to allow Macpherson to pursue his Gaelic researches. In the autumn he set out to visit western Inverness, the islands of Skye, North and South Uist and Benbecula. He obtained MSS. which he translated with the assistance of Captain Morrison and the Rev. A. Gallie. Later in the year he made an expedition to Mull, when he obtained other MSS. In 1761 he announced the discovery of an epic on the subject of Fingal, and in December he published Fingal, an Ancient Epic Poem in Six Books, together with Several Other Poems composed by Ossian, the Son of Fingal, translated from the Gaelic Language, written in the musical measured prose of which he had made use in his earlier volume. Temora followed in 1763, and a collected edition; The Works of Ossian, in 1765.
The genuineness of these so-called translations from the works of a 3rd-century bard was immediately challenged in England, and Dr Johnson, after some local investigation, asserted (Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland, 1775) that Macpherson had only found fragments of ancient poems and stories, which he had woven into a romance of his own composition. Macpherson is said to have sent Johnson a challenge, to \vhich Johnson replied that he was not to be deterred from detecting what he thought a cheat by the menaces of a ruffian. Macpherson never produced his originals, which he refused to publish on the ground of the expense. In 1764 he was made secretary to General Johnstone at Pensacola, West Florida, and when he returned, two years later, to England, after a quarrel with Johnstone, he was allowed to retain his salary as a pension. He occupied himself with writing several historical works, the most important of which was Original Papers, containing the Secret History of Great Britain from the Restoration to the Accession of the House of Hanover', to which are prefixed Extracts from the Life of James II., as written by himself (1775). He enjoyed a salary for defending the policy of Lord North's government, and held the lucrative post of London agent to Mahommed Ali, nabob of Arcot. He entered parliament in 1780, and continued to sit until his death. In his later years he bought an estate, to which he gave the name oi Belville, in his native county of Inverness, where he died on the 17th of February 1796.
After Macpherson's death, Malcolm Laing, in an appendix to his History of Scotland (1800), propounded the extreme view that the so-called Ossianic poems were altogether modern in origin, and that Macpherson’s authorities were practically non-existent.. Much of Macpherson’s matter is clearly his own, and he confounds the stories belonging to different cycles. But apart from the doubtful morality of his transactions he must still be regarded as one of the great Scottish writers. The varied sources of his work and its worthlessness as a transcript of actual Celtic poems do not alter the fact that he produced a work of art which by its deep appreciation of natural beauty and the melancholy tenderness of its treatment of the ancient legend did more than any single work to bring about the romantic movement in European, and especially in German, literature. It was speedily translated into many European languages, and Herder and Goethe (in his earlier period) were among its profound admirers. Cesarotti’s Italian translation was one of Napoleon’s favourite books.
James Clerk Maxwell – Discoverer of Electro-Magnetic Waves

Often ranked next to the incomparable Sir Isaac Newton as one of the most outstanding scientists of all time is physicist James Clerk Maxwell, from Edinburgh whose supreme achievement is the formulation of electromagnetic theory. When he first became interested in electricity, he wrote Kelvin asking how best to proceed. Kelvin recommended that Maxwell read the published works in the order Faraday, Kelvin, Ampère, and then the German physicists. Maxwell wanted to present electricity in its most simple form. He started out by writing a paper entitled "On Faraday's Lines of Force" (1856), in which he translated Faraday's theories into mathematical form, presenting the lines of force as imaginary tubes containing an incompressible fluid. He then published "On Physical Lines of Force" (1861) in which he treated the lines of force as real entities, based on the movement of iron filings in a magnetic field and using the analogy of an idle wheel. He also presented a derivation that light consists of transverse undulations of the same medium which is the cause of electric and magnetic phenomena. Finally, he published a purely mathematical theory in "On a Dynamical Theory of the Electromagnetic Field" (1865).
Maxwell's formulation of electricity and magnetism was published in A Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism (1873), which included the formulas today known as the Maxwell Equations. Maxwell also showed that these equation implicitly required the existence of electromagnetic waves traveling at the speed of light. He also proposed a physical theory of ether. He abandoned attempts to formulate a specific mechanical model, instead using the formalism of Lagrangian mechanics.
With Clausius, he developed the kinetic theory of gases. In "Illustrations of the Dynamical Theory of Gases" (1860), he showed the velocity distribution of molecules was "Maxwellian." His studies of kinetic theory led him to propose the Maxwell's demon paradox in a 1867 letter to Tait. Maxwell's demon (termed a "finite being" by Maxwell) is a tiny hypothetical creature that can see individual molecules. He can make heat flow from a cold body to a hot one by opening a door whenever a molecule with above average kinetic energy approaches from the cold body, or below average kinetic energy approaches from the hot body, then quickly closing it. This process appears to violate the Second Law of Thermodynamics, but was used by Maxwell to show that the Second Law of Thermodynamics is a statistical law describing the properties of a large number of particles. Maxwell also observed in private correspondence that the time reversal of all events was consistent with the laws of dynamics, but inconsistent with the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Maxwell published his views on the limitations of the Second Law in Theory of Heat (1871).
Maxwell made numerous other contributions to the advancement of science. He argued that the rings of Saturn were small individual particles, performed experiments which showed the viscosity varied directly with temperature, derived the equipartition theorem, and tried to describe spectral lines using a vibrational model.

John Napier - "Inventor" of Logarithms

Mathematician and Astronomer. Born at Merchiston Castle (Edinburgh). He was educated at St. Salvator's College, St. Andrews. He devised "Napier's Rods" or "Napier's Bones" which permitted easy multiplication by addition. This led to him defining the concept of logarithms, which he described in Mirifici Logarithmorum Canonis Descriptio (1614). He also invented the decimal point.

His son to his first wife, Elizabeth, became the first Lord Napier. In 1572, he married Agnes Chisholm and they settled on his family estate at Gartness, near Killearn (Stirling). Napier was buried at St. Cuthbert's Church in Edinburgh.

My top three would be Watt, Flemming, and Smith. I had to vote for Knox, though, since I'm a Scottish-American Presbyterian!

Sir Walter Scott - Originator of Historical Novel

Edinburgh-born Walter Scott can be said to have invented the historical novel. He has remained one of the most popular novelists of all time, though his lengthy narratives have a bit of a problem keeping the interest of today's fast-moving generation fed on a diet of television "sound-bites." Trained as a lawyer and sheriff of Selkirk in 1799, Scott was a principal clerk of session in 1896, but had already embarked upon his literary career by translating from the German.

In 1802, Scott published his collection of ballads, Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, followed by his own compositions in the enormously popular The Lay of the Last Minstrel in 1805. Next came Marmion (1808), The Lady of the Lake (1810) and other poems including The Lord of the Isles (1815). It was time to turn to the novel. A prolific output of some of the world's best novels then ensured from Scott, at first known only by a pseudonym and referred to as "The Great Unknown."

Waverley was completed in 1814. It was followed by Guy Mannering (1815), The Antiquary and Old Mortality (1816), Rob Roy and The Heart of Midlothian (1818), The Bride of Lammermoor and A Legend of Montrose (1819), Ivanhoe, The Monastery and The Abbot (1820), Kenilworth (1821), The Pirate and The Fortunes of Nigel (1822), Peveril of the Peak and Quentin Durward (1823), Redgauntlet (1824), The Talisman (1825), Woodstock (1826), The Fair Maid of Perth (1828), Anne of Geierstein (1829), Count Robert of Paris and Castle Dangerous (1831).

The novels were being turned out at great speed to pay off his enormous debts, especially those with the running of his mansion at Abbotsford. As if all this were not enough, Scott also contributed many serious prose works valuable as scholarship. He edited the Works of Dryden (1810) and The Works of Swift (in 19 vols. 1814) as well as the Letters of Sir Ralph Sadler (1809) and the Somers Tracts (1809-15 in 13 volumes). In 1823, he founded the Bannatyne Club to promote interest in historical scholarship, prime examples of which were his Life of Napoleon (1827); Tales of a Grandfather (1828-30), essentially a child's history of Scotland; and a History of Scotland (for Lardner's Cyclopedia). While he was doing all this, he continued to write articles for the Quarterly Review and the Encyclopedia Britannica.

We remember Scott as novelist, biographer, ballad collector, editor, poet, critic and historian. In all his novels, Scott gave us a romantic, nationalistic Scotland.

Michael Scott (c.1175 - c.1230) – Medieval alchemist and Arabic Scholar

His familiar spirit bridled the Tweed and split the Eildons in three; the latter was a strange legend to grow, for the nearby Roman camp was known as Trimontium a thousand years before. Yet in the popular mind Michael Scott was the "Wizard of the North", a prophet and magician perhaps confused with the old stories of Merlin. In reality, though much of his biography is sketchy, he stands forth as one of the most remarkable minds of his age.
His place of birth is uncertain. Some put it over the Border in Durham, but, although he studied at the cathedral school there, he is more likely to have been born in Upper Tweeddale where the Scotts originated. He proceeded to Oxford and then, in succession, to the Universities of Paris and Bologna. He studied mathematics, theology and law and, by his middle thirties, was master of all the knowledge of Christian Europe. Next he went to Palermo, where he became tutor to the future Emperor Frederick II, himself later to be known as 'Stupor Mundi', the Wonder of the World.
The court of Palermo was at that time the most remarkable in Europe. There could be read the rich tapestry of Mediterranean civilisation, Greek, Roman, Arab and Norman had all gone to make it. Scott learned both Greek and Arabic, to add to the Latin in which, like all educated men, he habitually wrote and, one presumes, thought. Frederick himself has been called the first modern man, but to say this is to disparage medieval civilisation unjustly. Rather, he and Michael Scott may be seen more fairly as representative of that civilisation with its zeal for knowledge, its breadth of culture and its ignorance of nationalism. Certainly Michael Scott, in forming the Emperor's mind, contributed to Frederick's fascination with the East. He wrote for the Emperor a handbook on astronomy and another on physiognomy, because he believed that 'the inward disposition of the soul may be read in visible characters on the bodily frame'. He also dedicated to the Emperor a translation of Aristotle's work on animals. It is pleasing to think that he shared a taste for natural history with the Emperor. Frederick built up a great collection of elephants, giraffes, dromedaries, panthers and rare birds; he also introduced the pheasant into Calabria and perhaps indeed into Europe.
The translation of Aristotle's text - from Arabic-was made at Toledo. Knowledge of Aristotle had disappeared from Western Europe. Michael Scott was among the first to reintroduce it by way of translations from the Arabic versions of Avicenna and Averroes. Such knowledge seemed dangerous to the Church and Scott's translations were censured; yet he was a potent influence, contributing to that reconciliation of Aristotelianism with Christianity which was to find its fullest expression i the work of the Doctor angelicus, St.Thomas Aquinas, who was in fact related through his mother to Frederick II. St Thomas is known to have been taught by a devotee of Aristotelian thought at the University of Naples, which Frederick founded; his master might well have been himself a pupil of Michael Scott.
After some years at Toledo, Scott returned to Palermo where he continued as the Emperor's physician and astrologer. Pope Honorius II, presumably to please the Emperor, wrote to Stephen Langton, Primate of England, requesting him to confer a bishopric on Scott. He was duly elected Archbishop of Cashel, but declined the preferment, reputedly because of his ignorance of Irish. If this was so, it showed a scrupulousness not often found among medieval clerics.
Towards the end of his life, he is said to have fallen into depression. It is to this period that various prophecies associated with his name are assigned. They may be apocryphal, however. Around 1230 he went to England to teach at Oxford. He is said to have returned to the Border Lands and to have died there. Some place his death at Melrose, others in Cumberland. He was certainly dead by 1235, when the Latin poet Henry of Avranches wrote that 'He who had impugned Fate has himself submitted to his decrees'.
Scholar, scientist, astrologer and alchemist, Scott was in the forefront of human knowledge and cast a glamour over his time. Dante placed him in the fourth chasm of the eighth circle of Hell among the sorcerers and enchanters. Others, however, revered him as a sage. Readers of John Buchan's The Three Hostages will recall that the villain Dominick Medina quotes a line: 'Sit vini abstemius qui hermeneuma tentat aut hominum petit dominatum (let whoever seeks a secret knowledge and dominion over men abstain from wine)'. Sandy Arbuthnot identifies this as coming from one of Michael Scott's unpublished papers in the Bibliotheque Nationale de Paris. Sandy Describes the paper as 'a manual of the arts of spiritual control - oh amazingly up-to-date, I assure you, and a long way ahead of our foolish psycho-analysts'.
'Se non e vero, e ben trovato', as the Italians say ('if it's not true, it's well imagined'), and a fine tribute from one Borderer to another.

Johannes Duns Scotus – Medieval Theologian/Philosopher

1266–1308, scholastic philosopher and theologian, called the Subtle Doctor. A native of Scotland, he became a Franciscan and taught at Oxford, Paris, and Cologne. The exact canon of Duns Scotus’ work is unknown; the best known of his undoubtedly authentic works are On the First Principle and two commentaries on the Sentences of Peter Lombard. He put Aristotelian thought to the service of Christian theology and was the founder of a school of scholasticism called Scotism, which was often opposed to the Thomism of the followers of St. Thomas Aquinas. Scotism has had considerable influence on Roman Catholic thought and has been to some degree sponsored by the Franciscans.

In metaphysics, Duns taught the “univocity of being”; by this he meant that being must be regarded as the ultimate abstraction that can be applied to everything that exists. He is also known for the use of the “formal distinction,” a subtle manner of distinguishing between different aspects of the same thing. The Scotists deny that matter is the principle of individuality and insist that individuation of things is caused by a determination called “haecceitas” or “thisness.” According to Scotus, the essence of things as well as their existence depends not on the Divine Intellect but on the Divine Will; his philosophy accordingly is voluntaristic in its entire spirit. It is possible to prove the existence of God, but the ontological proof of St. Anselm is modified: the idea of God’s possible existence involves his necessary existence, but knowledge of that possible existence must be demonstrated from sensible things, i.e., from experience. Scotus taught that the state arose from common consent of the people in a kind of social contract. He also denied that property was ordained by natural law.

Adam Smith - Classical Economist

Two hundred years after his death, Adam Smith's ideas of market-based economics, limited government and incentive-based systems have become the dominant force in economics world-wide.

Born in 1723 in the Scottish fishing village of Kirkcaldy, Adam Smith studied at Glasgow University, later becoming Professor of Moral Philosophy at Glasgow . He made brief sojourns to London and the European continent, and in 1776 published his masterwork, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. It was the first book of modern economics and has influenced all economists since. He died in 1790.

James Watt – Pioneer of Steam Engine

He.was not the inventor of the steam engine, nor did he claim to be, but the steam engine he perfected made the Industrial Revolution possible. When he was given a model of a Newcomen engine to repair in 1764, he quickly saw its inefficiencies and set out to provide remedies. Newcomen' engines had been around since their invention in 1705; they were inefficient, cooling down and losing their pressure far too rapidly. In addition, they were primarily used for pumping as attempts to convert them to rotary motion had failed.

Greenock-born Watt, a friend of the pioneering engineer John Smeaton, realised the necessity of removing the condensing of steam from the cylinder that had to be continually heated to hold steam for the power stroke and then cooled to condense the steam. In 1765, Watt proposed that the steam should be condensed in a condenser outside the cylinder; it was one of the greatest advances in the development of industry; it revolutionized the steam engine and it transformed the world.

Watt patented his idea in 1769 and after a period working with John Roebuck of the Caron Ironworks, went into partnership with Matthew Boulton to found the Boulton Watt Foundry at the Soho Works in Birmingham. In 1774, at Bersham in North Wales, John Wilkinson invented a way of boring cylinders (originally for the making of canons) and thus found a way to produce the Watt engine in copious numbers. Beginning with a steam engine to power a flour mill, the factory produced over 350 highly efficient steam engines that made their present felt in all branches of British industry and transformed the nation. It was also a Boulton and Watt engine that powered Robert Fulton's S.S. Clermont on its historic journey up the Hudson in 1807.

Watt made many improvements such as the air pump, steam-jacketed cylinders, double acting engines (in which the piston both pushed and pulled), the sun and planet rotary mechanism (thus adapting the steam engine for rotary motion), parallel motion and the governor for regulating an engine's speed. Truly a remarkable list of accomplishments. Many areas of Britain that had relied purely on water power could now use the Boulton and Watt engine; mills and foundries were now set up on or near the coalfields. It wasn't long before Richard Trevithick adapted the rotary engine to the idea of transporting men, goods, and machinery by rail. As a sideline, Watt was also responsible for introducing to Britain the use of chlorine as a bleaching agent, a French invention of tremendous benefit to the rapidly growing cotton industry.

Incidentally, Scottish academics voted David Hume as the greatest ever Scot. However, that's really in terms of intellectual originality and impact, not historical impact. He may have been the smartest, but that doesn't make him the most historically important.

I can't believe you left off... Sean Connery!

I think Hume gets a degree of favortism, since his accomplishments were actually in Scotland where he remained for most of his life. I noticed when reading some of the bios, alot of them headed for warmer climates.

Of course, I voted for Adam Smith.

Originally posted by Greadius
I can't believe you left off... Sean Connery!

I think Hume gets a degree of favortism, since his accomplishments were actually in Scotland where he remained for most of his life. I noticed when reading some of the bios, alot of them headed for warmer climates.

Of course, I voted for Adam Smith.

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I'm glad some-one read the bios. They took ages , although many are only slighly edited pastes

I've always thought Hume was a bit overrated, although this may be because no matter how many times I read his stuff, I still can't discern any kind of meaning.

Originally posted by napoleon526
I've always thought Hume was a bit overrated, although this may be because no matter how many times I read his stuff, I still can't discern any kind of meaning.

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Yes, Hume's a bit long-winded. But I don't think he's overrated, not by a long-shot. All of science has been walking a tight-rope since his attack on causation. He is the Sceptic. Causation, the Self/Soul, morality and religion, the most basic human concepts, have never regained the comfy place they occupied before Hume. I personally think that Hume will be appreciated as one of the greatest ever minds, when another thousand years or so brings perspective.

what about andrew carnegie?!

edit: i did not read the bios, i know who they all are. i've read the book "how scotland invented the modern world" really good book. I learned much i did not know of scotland.

Originally posted by HighlandWarrior

edit: i did not read the bios, i know who they all are. i've read the book "how scotland invented the modern world" really good book. I learned much i did not know of scotland.

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The Arthur Hermann book? Yes, it's a good book. I've got a signed copy

EDIT: You can't have read that book if you believe that Andrew Carnegie was the most influential Scot ever. MAybe Lord Kames, or John Witherspoon, but not Andrew Carnegie.

As a physicist, I think Maxwell's equations of electromagnetism are among the most elegant in the whole of physics. They provide the basis for the whole of our current understanding of electric and magnetic filds. They led pretty directly to Einstein's special relativity. Add to that the Maxwell-Boltmann distribution and you have someone who made a contribution that is as substantial as anyone in Physics.

I've got to confess my surprise that James Watt is so far ahead of everyone except Adam Smith.

Why is that?

Originally posted by col
As a physicist, I think Maxwell's equations of electromagnetism are among the most elegant in the whole of physics. They provide the basis for the whole of our current understanding of electric and magnetic filds. They led pretty directly to Einstein's special relativity. Add to that the Maxwell-Boltmann distribution and you have someone who made a contribution that is as substantial as anyone in Physics.

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As a physicist myself too, I can't do anything but completely agree with col. Maxwell's contributions to physics are immense, particulary the elegant (as pointed out by col) equations that pretty much describe every electromagnetic phenomena. When you think of modern technology, Maxwell is very much behind it.

btw, it's Maxwell-Boltzmann.

Originally posted by calgacus
I've got to confess my surprise that James Watt is so far ahead of everyone except Adam Smith.

Why is that?

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Well, maybe it's because he deserves it. It seems that no discussion is going to emerge.

Calgacus,

This is just a general comment not with moderator powers, but this thread seems to be an excuse for you to post a new comment after every other poster. You even quoted your self and replied and that meets the definition of spam. This is not a bad topic and could generate interesting comments but with the sapm button engaged on full auto with a chain drive it just makes it look like you are searching for another method to artificially inflate your post count and gain attention now that we have put the kibosh on your previous game of dredging up all the old and moldy threads from the deep dark recesses of the database.

Billy Connelly! A genius in his own right.

Originally posted by cracker
Calgacus,

This is just a general comment not with moderator powers, but this thread seems to be an excuse for you to post a new comment after every other poster. You even quoted your self and replied and that meets the definition of spam. This is not a bad topic and could generate interesting comments but with the sapm button engaged on full auto with a chain drive it just makes it look like you are searching for another method to artificially inflate your post count and gain attention now that we have put the kibosh on your previous game of dredging up all the old and moldy threads from the deep dark recesses of the database.

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No offence, Cracker, but you're way off. That's a really bad accussation to make.

I want a discussion, and I'm not going to get one if the thread, which took ages to make, drops down into the archives. Look at many of my threads, they are hardly the product of someone wanting to "artificially" increase his post count. You're putting 2 and 2 together and getting 9.

Frankly, post count is not a big issue for me. Conjecturing that it is, as you did, is bad game.

I can't even conjecture why you think I'm trying to get attention. From whom?

My "previous game"

Some mods on this forum seem to be overly misanthropic.