This week I read the book How the Scots Invented the Modern World: The True Story of How Western Europe’s Poorest Nation Created Our World and Everything in It. Well, the British title, The Scottish Enlightenment: The Scots’ Invention of the Modern World, is more appropriate. A more accurate one might have been How Scots invented more about the modern world than you thought. But the book is only a little over 300 pages-so I would recommend it. The thing that I noted most is that it illustrates the Anglospheric tension between the axiomatic & organic-the Scottish espousal of universal values that seemed to have evolved out of historically conditioned particularisms. Though to give full disclosure, I am a big fan of David Hume-so no surprise that this book was a pleasure to read for me (though it gives more ink to Adam Smith).
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