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Centers of Progress, Pt. 18: Edinburgh (Scottish Enlightenment)

Blog Post | Education & Literacy

Centers of Progress, Pt. 18: Edinburgh (Scottish Enlightenment)

The Scottish Enlightenment led to many intellectual accomplishments, including the emergence of empiricism and modern economics.

Today marks the eighteenth installment in a series of articles by HumanProgress.org called Centers of Progress. Where does progress happen? The story of civilization is in many ways the story of the city. It is the city that has helped to create and define the modern world. This bi-weekly column will give a short overview of urban centers that were the sites of pivotal advances in culture, economics, politics, technology, etc.

Our eighteenth Center of Progress is Edinburgh. The city was at the heart of the Scottish Enlightenment – a vital period in intellectual history that spanned the 18th and early 19th centuries. The thinkers of the Scottish Enlightenment made important breakthroughs in economics, mathematics, architecture, medicine, poetry, chemistry, theatre, engineering, portraiture, and geology.

Today, Edinburgh remains Scotland’s intellectual and cultural center, as well as its capital. The city’s name comes from an old Celtic word, Eidyn, which is a name for the area, and burgh, which means fortress. A hilly city on Scotland’s east coast, Edinburgh is home to a famous castle dating to at least the 12th century. Edinburgh Castle is Scotland’s most-visited tourist attraction, drawing over 2 million visitors in 2019 alone. The city is also home to the University of Edinburgh, one of Scotland’s most prestigious universities. Edinburgh’s nicknames include Auld Reekie (Old Smoky) for Old Town’s smoky chimneys. The city is also sometimes called Auld Greekie, or the “Athens of the North,” for the city’s role as a hub of philosophy. Edinburgh’s medieval Old Town and neoclassical New Town together comprise a single UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Archeological evidence suggests that the area where Edinburgh now stands has been inhabited since at least 8,500 BC. Celtic tribespeople were the main inhabitants. Over the centuries, the area was ruled by various peoples, including Welsh-speaking Brythonic Celts. Edinburgh came under Scottish rule around 960 AD, when King Indulf the Aggressor seized the settlement. Edinburgh became the Scottish capital in 1437, replacing Scone.

Scotland in the 18th century had just undergone decades of political and economic turmoil. Disruption was caused by the House of Orange’s ousting of the House of Stuart, the Jacobite Rebellions, the failed and costly colonial Darien Scheme, famine, and the 1707 Union of Scotland and England. Yet Scotland, particularly Edinburgh, were to embark on an exciting new journey.

If you could visit Edinburgh during the Scottish Enlightenment, you would enter a cold, compact, walled-off city of winding, cobblestone streets. The Scottish author James Buchan has described the city of the era as “Inconvenient, dirty, old-fashioned, alcoholic, quarrelsome and poor.” But through the fog, you would see the warm glow of lights in the windows of the university buildings, the homes hosting reading societies and club meetings, and the taverns serving haggis and whiskey to patrons discussing philosophy. The city was alive with the energy of new ideas and the spirit of scientific inquiry. While Edinburgh was then a city of merely 40,000 residents, it was crowded with great minds tackling big questions.

It helped that the city’s religious culture was welcoming to new ideas. The dominant Presbyterian Church had just undertaken a successful literacy campaign. Scotland, then one of Western Europe’s poorest countries, enjoyed perhaps the world’s highest literacy rate. The reigning faction within the Presbyterian Church was comprised of moderate, open-minded clergymen. Those moderates formed close ties to many of the Scottish Enlightenment’s key figures and encouraged their work. There was also a more conservative faction within the Presbyterian Church that disdained the Enlightenment scholars’ work and even tried to excommunicate the philosopher David Hume (1711–1776) for heresy. The better-connected moderate faction within the church shielded Hume from ex-communication.

The moderate Presbyterian Reverend William Robertson (1721–1793) became the University of Edinburgh’s principal and founded one of the Scottish Enlightenment’s most prominent intellectual societies in 1750. Robertson’s Select Society of Edinburgh counted among its members such luminaries as Hume, the philosopher and historian Adam Ferguson (1723–1816) and the economist Adam Smith (1723–1790).

Much like the French Enlightenment’s Parisian salons, the numerous reading societies and intellectual men’s clubs that sprung up throughout Edinburgh enabled the city’s success. Unlike in Paris, where women often hosted salons, sexist cultural norms excluded women from Edinburgh’s intellectual gatherings, with rare exceptions such as the poet and socialite Alison Cockburn (1712–1794). A modern woman would not wish to live in 18th-century Edinburgh, but the men at the time found the networking and debate opportunities afforded by the city’s various clubs invaluable. The French writer Voltaire opined in 1762 that “today it is from Scotland that we [Europeans] get rules of taste in all the arts, from epic poetry to gardening.”

Scotland made its mark in the literary realm, producing such figures as the inimitable poet Robert Burns (1759–1796) and the Edinburger novelist Sir Walter Scott (1771–1832). Scotland also pioneered new landscaping, architectural, and interior design tastes. That was thanks largely to the Edinburgh-raised-and-educated architect Robert Adam (1728—1792). Together with his brother James (1730–94), he developed a new approach to architecture known as the “Adam style.” The “Adam style” influenced many residences in 18th-century England, Scotland, Russia, and the United States after Independence, where it evolved into the so-called “Federal style.” Scotland also led the way in portrait painting, thanks to taste-making Edinburger painters such as Allan Ramsay (1713—1784) and Sir Henry Raeburn (1756—1823).

While the Scottish Enlightenment produced many contributions to the arts and humanities, it also gave rise to groundbreaking work in the sciences. Thomas Jefferson, in 1789, wrote, “So far as science is concerned, no place in the world can pretend to competition with Edinburgh.” The Edinburger geologist James Hutton (1726—1797) redefined his field by developing many of the fundamental principles of his discipline. The chemist and physicist Joseph Black (1728—1799), who studied at the University of Edinburgh, discovered carbon dioxide, magnesium, and the important thermodynamic concepts of latent heat and specific heat.

The physician William Cullen (1710–1790) helped to make Edinburgh Medical School into the English-speaking world’s leading medical education center. There he helped to train many notable scientists, including Black and the anatomist Alexander Monro Secondus (1733–1817). The latter was the first person to detail the human lymphatic system. Sir James Young Simpson (1811–1870), admitted to the University of Edinburgh at the young age of fourteen, went on to develop chloroform anesthesia. That invention vastly improved the experience of surgery patients. It also saved Queen Victoria and countless other women from unnecessary suffering during childbirth.

The Scottish Enlightenment also advanced mathematics and engineering. The mathematician and University of Edinburgh professor Colin Maclaurin (1698–1746), a child prodigy who entered university at age 11, made notable contributions to the fields of geometry and algebra. The civil engineer Thomas Telford (1757–1834), who worked for a time in Edinburgh, was so prolific that he earned the nickname the Colossus of Roads (a play on one of the Seven Wonders of the ancient world, the Colossus of Rhodes). The Scottish engineer and inventor James Watt (1736—1819) greatly improved the steam engine’s design and thus helped to bring about the Industrial Revolution.

The American author Eric Weiner has argued that the key to Edinburgh’s sudden, unexpected success was Scottish practicality. The Encyclopædia Britannica, which was founded in Edinburgh in 1768 and was thus an invention of the Scottish Enlightenment, also claims that underlying the city’s diverse achievements were several notable developments in Scottish philosophy, all of which had a practical bent. Those developments were skepticism toward the so-called rationalist school of thought (which held that all truths could be deduced through the use of reason alone), a focus on empirical methods of scientific inquiry, the emergence of a philosophy of “common sense,” and attempts to develop a science of human nature.

Popularization of empiricism was among the greatest contributions of the Scottish Enlightenment to human progress. Relatedly, “common sense realism,” advanced by thinkers such as Ferguson, emphasized real-world observations rather than abstract theorizing and held that the uneducated, common man was an intellectual’s equal in matters of basic common sense. Common sense realism influenced the thinking of the U.S. Founding Fathers Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, among others. Hume’s A Treatise of Human Nature (1739), among the most influential philosophical works in history, was the foundational text of cognitive science.

The desire to understand human behavior gave rise not only to cognitive science, but also to economics. Adam Smith is widely regarded as the founder of modern economics. His An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776) was among the first works to delve into such topics as the division of labor and the benefits of free-trade economies (as opposed to mercantilism and protectionism). The work not only influenced economic policy soon after it was published, but helped to define the terms of economic debate for centuries. Every important economic thinker since Smith, including those who strongly disagreed with Smith, such as Karl Marx, nonetheless cited the Scotsman and wrestled with his ideas.

By creating the field of economics, Smith helped humanity to think about policies that enhance prosperity. Those policies, including economic freedom that Smith advocated, have since helped to raise living standards to heights that would be unimaginable to Smith and his contemporaries. (Explore the evidence for yourself).


Edinburgh was an improbable Center of Progress. A relatively small, unkempt, and inhospitable locale emerged from a century of instability to take the world by storm.  Widespread literacy, open-mindedness, intense debates at intellectual gatherings, and a practical grounding aided the city’s successes. Edinburgh was essentially a small university town that punched far above its weight in human achievement. The American Founding Father Benjamin Franklin noted that “the University of Edinburgh possessed a set of truly great men … as have ever appeared in any age or country.” For its innumerable achievements, and particularly for giving humanity empiricism and economics, Scottish Enlightenment-era Edinburgh is rightfully our eighteenth Center of Progress.

The Economist | Macroeconomic Environment

America Is in the Midst of an Extraordinary Startup Boom

“Last year applications to form businesses reached 5.5m, a record. Although they have slowed a touch this year, the monthly average is still about 80% higher than during the decade prior to covid, compared with just a 20% rise in Europe. Startups normally play an outsized role in creating employment in America, as elsewhere. By definition, every startup job counts as new, whereas mature companies have more churn. That difference has become even starker. In the four years before the pandemic, established firms added one net job for every four created by startups; in the four years since the pandemic, established firms have actually lost one job for every four created by startups.

Perhaps even more important than the numbers is the kind of ventures that are being created. In 2020 and 2021 many startups catered to the working-from-home revolution. These included online retailers, small trucking firms and landscapers. Since mid-2022, however, the baton has been passed to technology firms, according to Ryan Decker of the Fed and John Haltiwanger of the University of Maryland. A paper published in March by the Census Bureau found a particularly sharp increase last year in business applications based around artificial intelligence. For researchers, this carries echoes of the 1990s, when computers and the internet took off.”

From The Economist.

Blog Post | Economics

Javier Milei and the Future of Latin America | Podcast Highlights

Chelsea Follett interviews Daniel Raisbeck about the recent election of Javier Milei and what it means for the future of Argentina and the rest of Latin America.

Listen to the full podcast episode or read the full transcript here.

What are some of the most promising events in Latin America today?

Of course, the election of Javier Milei. He took office on December 10th, and it’s all quite encouraging. He had a large decree that repealed many laws and modified others to liberate the Argentine economy, which is currently one of the most regulated economies in the world.

It will depend, of course, on congress and the courts which can potentially block many of his initiatives. Here at Cato, my colleague Gabriel Calderon and I have focused on his main proposal: the dollarization of Argentina’s economy. In general, we think it’s a very good policy, but in that respect, I’ve been disappointed with the beginning of Milei’s government. We can discuss that further if you like.

First, let’s set the stage. Could you describe the situation in Argentina before Milei?

Well, the main problem was inflation, which was around 140 percent at the time of his election in November. And, of course, this is caused by the central bank. Argentina’s central bank is particularly irresponsible even within a Latin American context. Argentina also has one of the most regulated economies in the world. Forty percent of the population is living in poverty, and its economy hasn’t grown in over a decade.

This is especially sad because Argentina was incredibly successful in the 19th century. Its 1853 constitution was drafted based on the ideas of a classical liberal author called Juan Bautista Alberdi, who basically called for free trade, unrestricted industry, free immigration, and infrastructure to connect the country. And that’s what they did. It wasn’t immediate; it took a few decades, but from 1880 to 1916, you had this very successful export model that made Argentina into one of the richest countries in the world. Then, in 1916 and 1920, with everything that was happening in the world, nationalism took hold in Argentina and eventually morphed into Peronism, which is the standard, prototypical Latin American corporatist ideology. There has been a very clear decline ever since.

Could you talk more about Milei’s political beliefs?

Milei describes himself as a classical liberal or a libertarian and even as an anarcho-capitalist. He was actually trained as a neoclassical economist, but he relatively recently became an adherent of the Austrian School. And he’s been very open about it. He has never tried to soften his stances to appease some section of the electorate. He is also very talented at explaining economic concepts like the causes of inflation or the effects of regulation in a way that the public can understand.

Can you talk a little bit about the classical liberal tradition in Argentina?

Argentina has many classical liberal economists. At a per capita level, it’s probably the highest percentage in Latin America. They also have a long tradition of think tanks beginning in the 1950s. One particular think tank was started by a gentleman called Alberto Benegas Lynch, who corresponded with Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek. So, Argentina has a rich intellectual tradition in the Austrian School.

You mentioned dollarization. Could you talk more about this policy?

Dollarization means granting the US dollar legal tender or at least getting rid of exclusive legal tender for a national currency. Panama was born dollarized in 1904, and more recently, Ecuador dollarized in 2000 amid a crisis similar to what Argentina is facing now. El Salvador dollarized in 2001 after facing a similar crisis the previous decade.

When you dollarize, you end up with inflation levels akin to those of the United States. That might seem high from a US perspective after the last few years, but when you have 140 percent inflation in Argentina, 7 or 8 percent isn’t so bad. And even with all the problems with the US Federal Reserve, when you compare that to other countries, the dollar is a good option. By taking away the power of local politicians to interfere in the monetary sphere, you get rid of a huge problem. Now, that doesn’t solve all other problems. The governments can still run deficits and have debt problems. But when you have dollarization, those debt problems don’t really affect the private sector and regular citizens. Whereas with a national currency, a debt crisis usually leads to the deterioration of the currency and a loss in purchasing power.

Maintaining that purchasing power is why nobody is thinking about dedollarizing in these countries. Even in Ecuador, when the left-wing strongman Rafael Correa was at the peak of his power and popularity, with 60 percent or above in approval ratings, the dollar was always more popular than he was. That’s also why we think it’s important for Milei to dollarize and dollarize quickly. If the Peronists come back to power, they could overturn a lot of his deregulatory measures, but dollarization would be very difficult for any future government to reverse.

How hopeful are you that he’ll be able to implement dollarization?

Milei had to join forces with former President Mauricio Macri’s party to win the election, and many people in that party do not favor dollarization. Luis Caputo, the person that Milei put in charge of the finance ministry, who was also one of Macri’s finance ministers, has previously spoken out against dollarization. More recently, he has taken the view that the fiscal issue is more important and that dollarization will be a consequence of stabilizing the economy.

Caputo’s plan involves liquefying the debt through inflation. But the thing with liquefying the government debt is that you’re also liquefying everyone’s savings and salary. So, it’s a bold and even dangerous alternative. I also think that dollarization involves a similar process because once the market realizes you’re serious about dollarizing, the obvious thing would be for inflation to begin to fall and for interest rates to come down, but without destroying purchasing power even more. And I think that would be the better scenario.

It’s not clear if this decision was made out of political necessity or if Milei actually believes in what Caputo is doing. Dollarization is a niche policy that only three small countries have accomplished. Even though it’s been terribly successful, especially in bringing down inflation, relatively few economists understand dollarization and how to bring it about.

What other policies has Milei proposed?

His decree and omnibus law aim to deregulate broad swaths of the Argentine economy. One example is they got rid of price controls for rents that dated back to the 1970s. Another one is the Open Skies policy, which allows airlines from abroad to enter the market and even control flights within the country. Previously, they had a scheme to undercut the low-cost airlines in favor of the national airline, which is heavily subsidized. Milei even said he is privatizing the national airline by handing it over to the workers and cutting subsidies. But there’s a wide scope of reforms. These are just some highlights.

Let’s talk about Latin America as a whole. What are some of the biggest obstacles to the region becoming more prosperous?

One that is not well known is the lack of trade within the region. There is a mostly common language and very similar institutions and historical backgrounds, so you would think Latin America is an ideal region for trade. But trading between countries is very difficult. It’s also very difficult to migrate from one Latin American country to another. For instance, Colombia, where I’m from, restricts how many foreigners companies can hire. And this is standard across the region.

Another major problem is that there hasn’t been a very strong classical liberal element in Latin American politics. In the Anglosphere, you had Thatcherism and Reaganism and these types of movements, but the Latin American right has traditionally been very protectionist and corporatist. A right-wing government in Latin America, especially after the era of military dictatorships, might not bring about a humanitarian collapse like in Venezuela, but at the same time, these governments don’t allow their economies to grow. And, of course, if you don’t grow, you won’t be able to lift people out of poverty. That’s the big problem in Latin America: anemic economic growth. And it’s a question of how conscious people are that you need freedom to have that economic growth.

So that’s also why Milei is interesting. He is, of course, breaking from the leftist model but also from the crony capitalist, protectionist, and interventionist right.

We usually try to end on a positive note. What are you the most optimistic about concerning the region’s future?

I’m not going to be terribly original here, but five years ago, if someone had told me that, in a few years, there would be an openly libertarian or anarcho-capitalist president of Argentina, I wouldn’t have believed them. And this is where we are. And I think the lesson is that sometimes it might seem very difficult to enact freedom-oriented reforms, but it can be done. It is being done now. And it’s being done by someone who was very radical in his approach. He wasn’t moderating his principles to convince centrists. He was straightforward. And I think that’s a very positive example to follow.

The Human Progress Podcast | Ep. 46

Daniel Raisbeck: Javier Milei and the Future of Latin America

Daniel Raisbeck, a policy analyst on Latin America at the Cato Institute’s Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity, joins Chelsea Follett to discuss the recent election of Javier Milei and what it means for the future of Argentina and the rest of Latin America.

Blog Post | Economic Freedom

Xiaogang: How a Village Went Forward While China Went Back

Mao’s “Great Leap Forward” caused widespread famines. The small village of Xiaogang had suffered enough under communist principles, so residents decided to implement private property—and the results of this experiment changed the whole nation of China.

Summary: In 1981, 88 percent of the Chinese population lived in extreme poverty, but today that figure is less than one percent. This progress can in large part be traced back to the small rural village of Xiaogang, where, in 1978, local farmers defied state policies in favor of market-oriented reforms involving the rise of private property, setting the stage for China’s broader economic liberalization and rapid growth into a powerhouse.


In 1981, 88 percent of the Chinese population lived in extreme poverty. Today, this figure is less than one percent. In a country composed of nearly 1.5 billion people, that means hundreds of millions of people became more prosperous than ever over about four decades—hardly any time at all compared to China’s 3,500-year history.

Classical liberals and libertarians have observed throughout history that cities are disproportionately the centers of technological and economic development. However, for every rule, there is an exception. The rural village of Xiaogang in China, though small, is that exception: one that transformed not only China’s economy but, inadvertently, the whole globe’s.

The Great Leap Forward and Mass Starvation

A devout advocate of communism, Mao Zedong implemented a state-​run economy. Bureaucrats decided what workers produced, who to hire or lay off, how much to invest, and what workers were paid. State-​owned enterprises, where the only “enterprise” to be found was in the name, were dead weight on the economy and chronically underperformed.

Some opposed the Soviet-​style model of economic planning being implemented in China, such as Gu Zhun and Sun Yefang. In 1956, Gu argued for the importance of the market even in a socialist economy. For his writings, he was denounced as a “rightist” and spent most of his remaining life behind bars or in re-​education centers. Sun observed that state-​owned enterprises lacked autonomy, they could not adapt to local circumstances. For his ideas, Sun was labeled a “revisionist” and was imprisoned for seven years during the Cultural Revolution.

Though behind bars, the observations of Gu and Sun proved prophetic after the disastrous policies of Mao’s infamous Great Leap Forward.

The Great Leap Forward was a large-​scale social and economic campaign initiated by the Chinese Communist Party in 1958 to rapidly transform China from an agrarian to a socialist society through industrialization and subsequent collectivization. The chronic underfunding of agriculture and the glaring inefficiency of collectivization led to critical declines in food production. Historians estimate tens of millions died from starvation through mismanagement by the state during this period.

After the death of Mao Zedong in 1976, fervor for a state-​run, collectivized economy fizzled. By December of 1978, the Third Plenary Session of the 11th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) was held in Beijing, an event recognized as the beginning of China’s economic reforms and the opening up of its economy. The ensuing market liberalization propelled China from a stagnant socialist society to a dynamic economic powerhouse that has since shocked the globe.

But before politicians in Beijing relaxed their grip on the economy, large parts of rural China had been ignoring state policy for years. Xiaogang’s villagers drafted the blueprints for China’s meteoric rise.

Xiaogang Goes Rogue

The Great Leap Forward and misguided collectivist policies had the worst impact on provinces like Anhui. In the winter of 1978, in the province of Anhui, the impoverished villagers of Xiaogang gathered together for a group meeting about their future survival. Recent harvests under collectivization were yielding worse and worse results. The villagers decided that rather than farming as a collective, each family would tend to their own plot of land, keeping the fruits of their labor.

Eighteen heads of households signed a document that formalized some simple rules. Each signatory took an oath of silence and pledged to look after one another’s children if anyone was killed or arrested for breaking collectivist policy. The document was hidden inside a piece of bamboo on the roof of a farmhouse.

With villagers now autonomous, and responsible for their individual profits and losses, Xiaogang quickly became successful, producing a greatly increased crop only a year after the secret agreement was made. Understanding the plight of farmers, local state officials stayed quiet and allowed Xiaogang to continue. Though kept a secret, the example of Xiaogang spread, and other villages encountered similar successes. The peripheries of China were experimenting with the cornerstone of the future market economy: private property.

While the state stalled, real change occurred where state control was weakest. On the margins of China, a series of quiet revolutions paved the way for markets to flourish. Before politicians in Beijing relaxed bans on private farming, farmers had already adopted the practice throughout rural China, especially Anhui. Private property proved to be an economic tonic worth every drop. State officials began to notice marked improvements from what were formerly the poorest areas. The Chinese government softened its policy, admitting that markets and private property would be necessary to a prosperous, modernized China.

China’s Future

The Third Plenary Session which reformed the Chinese economy is now recognized as a pivotal turning point in China’s economic miracle. It was influenced by the example of a small group of farmers. Over the following three decades, the world’s most populous country transformed from a poor, stagnant, socialist economy into an economic powerhouse. Villages like Xiaogang rediscovered the benefits of private property. Farmers could make their own decisions and for the first time in decades their potential was unleashed.

The turn to private property and individual responsibility in the midst of Mao’s disastrous experiments in collectivism was not inconsistent with aspects of Chinese tradition. In the Tao Te Ching, the 5th century BC philosopher Laozi argued the state should rarely interfere with people’s lives, writing, “Governing a large country is like frying a small fish. You spoil it with too much poking.” Mencius, a student of Confucius, believed in free trade, and when describing a well-​run state to King Hsüan of Qi, he explained that good kings kept taxes low, promoted trade, and raised no tariffs or levies on goods. The 17th-​century scholar Huang Xongxi advocated for a constitutional system with a separation of powers and strong protections on private property. The Chinese people are by no means innately collectivist.

Xiaogang is evidence that prosperity does not come from state action, but rather arises out of the humble efforts of everyday people to make the world a better place. World history is shaped by great political leaders and powers but Xiaogang also shows us how unlikely people can find themselves at the head of a quiet revolution.

Though private property is no longer illegal, China is nowhere near being a liberal society. China tragically remains an authoritarian country. But when a country of over a billion people leans towards the market, the entire globe feels its weight shift. China did not become a laissez faire society overnight, powerful barriers to liberty remain. The Third Plenary Session did not plan for a “Great Leap” to capitalism, only a small step—but there is no step towards liberty too small to be celebrated and applauded.

This article was originally published at Libertarianism.org on 11/17/2023.