Maturely Facing Reality, in a Hotbed
Thinking Like An 18th Century Scot
Thank you for the comments and feedback on my previous essay on maturity. I am grateful for all my readers. Following up on that theme, I thought I would share a bit about one of the more interesting Enlightenment Era philosophers. Now, first, I’ll be clear: much of the Enlightenment is overrated, and its impact on good and beneficial liberty is mixed. Contra the argument David Starkey has with Tom Holland, I will point out the Enlightenment made racism worse. In fact, I have a post saved as a draft on just how weird some of the Enlightenment thoughts got on that subject. Yet, also, it is important to note that the time period that coincides with the Enlightenment was actually quite religiously fervent. The oddities of the Enlightenment - the strangeness - were most often limited to elites, and it varied depending on which country you were in. It has been said that the French Enlightenment was especially frivolous and ultimately destructive. The Dutch Enlightenment and German Enlightenment were more serious but still contained an indulgent frivolity. The Anglo-American Enlightenment is, by contrast, often hard to nail down because the major cultural changes the Anglomundus were shaped by the early Industrial Revolution and the Great Awakening, which were followed by the social reforming zeal of the Wesleys and their movement, which we now call Methodism. These factors were utterly unique to Britain and its empire. Britain had about a 50-year industrialist head start over the rest of Europe. So when looking at the Enlightenment in Britain, we have to consider that the cultural, political, and economic context set it apart from the continent. Okay, with those caveats out of the way, I’ll talk about one of my favorite Enlightenment thinkers and why I think we need to rediscover some of his observations.
The Hotbed
In gardening, a hotbed is a heated “bed” of soil, often enclosed in a frame, used for growing plants. In places like northern Europe, a hotbed was used to start seedlings or grow plants that require higher temperatures, especially in colder climates or early spring. “Starting” the seedlings historically meant getting the process of germinating and growing going, or “started” for young plants from seeds before transplanting them to their final growing location. The purpose of the hotbed was to produce supplemental heat to get that head start on the season or to boost plants that didn’t usually thrive up north. The heat in hotbeds was generated through fresh manure because as manure decomposes, it produces heat.
Tobias George Smollett was a Scottish author and playwright in 1700s, a gifted writer who later inspired Charles Dickens. He lived when the Scots were benefiting from the 1707 union with England that created the modern state “Great Britain.” Scots were in the middle of a status revolution, they were inventing, colonizing, and making fortunes alongside the English and were thinking. Really thinking. To the point that scholars since the 20th century have looked back on what we call a unique “Scottish” Enlightenment.
This so-called Scottish Enlightenment was a profound period of intellectual and cultural growth in the north of Britain centered in the Scottish capital, Edinburgh, which Tobias Smollett called the "hotbed of genius." The arts, architecture, literature, philosophy, and science, the Scots were hitting them all. Heard of the philosophers David Hume and Adam Smith? Scots! Or maybe Great Scots! Think of how the Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith has influenced the field of economics. American thinkers have long smiled that Wealth of Nations came out in 1776 like it was specially made for us. The point is Scotland was on fire. One guy who is lesser known today but is one of my favorites is Thomas Reid, (1710–1796).
Reid is famed for his work on epistemology, which is a big word for a straightforward question: how do we know what we know? No, seriously, how? What counts as knowledge? Oh, I’m sorry, he was the Rev. Thomas Reid of the Church of Scotland, the official Church in Scotland which is descended from the work of John Knox, who introduced Calvinistic principles that became Scottish Presbyterianism. Reid, like many of the thinkers and scientists of the 1600s and 1700s, was religiously trained. He was a minister before being appointed a professor and spending the rest of his life as a scholar.
For Reid, the first step is to accept that reality is real. This means that if you see the sunrise, you assume that you are actually seeing it and not just an idea of it that popped into your head. You believe your eyes. That does not mean you know why the sun is rising, but you accept that it is doing so. Then, you can inquire into why the sun is rising. In a famous argument, he writes against David Hume, who focused too far on causation and the difficulty of knowing why things happen. Reid returns to basics. He argues that day and night follow each other constantly; therefore, we know they are linked, but that does not mean we have to assume that one causes the other. We merely know they follow each other without fail. Again, Reid focuses on what is clearly true first and then moves on from there.
Accepting reality is maturity. After you accept it, you can decide what to do about it, but you will get nowhere until you first accept the facts of the situation. Reid is important because he provided an alternative to the skepticism and idealism that were prevalent in philosophy during the Enlightenment. His ideas about common sense and direct perception offered a way to ground knowledge in everyday experience, which many found compelling. Non-scholars could get what Reid meant. He argued that people directly perceive the external world rather than just ideas or representations of it in their minds. In short, reality exists outside of your head and your ideas. But, this also leads to his ideas about what we call common sense, the ideas about individual moral judgment and free will that assume that humans have inherent moral sense. And this leads to free will and choice.
Some thinkers then and now say that actions are hardcoded or predestined based on prior actions. Instead, Reid argued that humans really do have choices in their behavior and, therefore, responsibilities. Now, some choices may be more likely than others for a particular person, but that does not take away their agency or ability to choose. Reid considers people complicated rather than mechanistic and always behaving one way. For example, a person may do something they know is a bad idea even though the consequences are potentially unpleasant. They know better and do worse. At other times, a person who would rather do something selfish will choose to do the right thing, even though they really do not want to do it. In each case, people have choices and show more about themselves when they make those choices.
So, I like Reid because he grounds us in reality and complexity. He makes you think and pushes back against overly simplistic explanations that attract some philosophers. Why is this important? Because a mature democracy needs to accept reality even when it is uncomfortable. Whether diplomacy, politics, or economics, confronting reality is the first step to solving problems. However, that does not mean that acceptance or problem-solving will be simple. People can choose to avoid problems or decide that the only solutions they will try are those that fit an ideology, rather than shaping their approach to the situation. The Scots had to do this themselves.
Historically, Scotland’s leaders tended to overestimate themselves. They picked fights with the wealthier and more numerous English and often with themselves in clannish feuds. It kept Scotland weak and backward. Then, in the high period of colonialism, they decided they were going to put most of their wealth into a plan to colonize Panama. I’m serious. It was called the Darien Scheme. Long story short, there was no Panama Canal, and sailing to Asia, where the richest trade was meant going around Africa or sailing around the tip of South America. So, the Scots thought they could make a lot of money by setting up ports on Panama's Caribbean and Pacific sides. Europeans would offload their goods on one side, and the Scots would carry the load a dozen miles overland to the other side and save the ships a trip of thousands of miles. Problems: no experience of colonialism in the tropics, encroaching on Spanish territory, and threatening to compete with the more powerful English directly to your south. Well, Spanish and English moves to block them, combined with losing a war against the mosquitoes - they do not play in the Caribbean - basically bankrupted Scotland. They were basically forced to join the English in 1707 to become Great Britain because they were broke. However, the English offered generous terms to avoid having Scotland as a constant threat, and the Scots took advantage. They accepted that they needed to modernize and adjust their behavior to the new globalizing world. And within two generations, they were the hotbed of genius. The Scots proved themselves to be one of the most remarkably resilient peoples in the world because they became major builders and beneficiaries of the British Empire for good and ill. History is filled with the counter-example of nations who refused to reform and adapt to change, only to suffer destruction. The Scots, and also the Japanese in the late 19th century - and again after the Second World War - are examples of people who accepted the reality of difficult and challenging situations and the fact of their own vulnerability. Rather than give in to pride and deny their weakness, they decided to do something about it, to become stronger and competitive. The first step to self-improvement is accepting that you need improvement. That’s a lesson I think we all need to be reminded of from time to time. But we also need to seek suitable environments for change, positive hotbeds that will incubate good thoughts and a healthy mindset.
Okay, just my thoughts for the weekend. Thanks for reading.