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Scotland: a Land of Wisdom In the 1740s, the famous French philosopher Voltaire said, "We look to Scotland for all our ideas of civilization. " That's not a bad advertisement for any country when it comes to attracting people to search for a first-class education. According to the American author Arthur Herman, the Scots invented the modern world itself. He argues that Scottish thinkers and intellectuals worked out many of the most important ideas on which modern life depends—everything from the scientific method to market economics. Their ideas did not just spread among intellectuals, but to those people in business, government and the sciences who actually shaped the Western world. It all started during the period that historians call the Scottish Enlightenment (启蒙运动), which is usually seen as taking place between the years 1740 and 1800．Before that, philosophy was mainly concerned with religion. For the thinkers of the Scottish Enlightenment, the proper study of humanity was mankind itself. Their reasoning was practical. For the philosopher David Hume, humanity was the right subject for philosophy because we can examine human behavior and so find real evidence of how people think and feel. And from that we can make judgments about the societies we live in and make concrete suggestions about how they can be improved, for universal benefit. Hume's enquiry into the nature of knowledge laid the foundations for the scientific method—the pursuit of truth through experiment. His friend and fellow resident of Edinburgh, Adam Smith, famously applied the study of mankind to the ways in which mankind does business. Trade, he argued, was a form of information. In pursuing our own interests through trading in markets, we all come to benefit each other. Smith's idea has dominated modern views of economics. It also has wide applications. He was one of the philosophers to point out that nations can become rich, free and powerful through peace, trade and invention. Although the Scottish Enlightenment ended a long time ago, the ideas which evolved at that time still underpin(构成……的基础) our theories of human exchange and enquiry. It also exists in Scotland itself in an educational tradition that combines academic excellence with orientation (方向). |