"(David)Hume, perhaps the most thoroughgoing skeptic in the history of philosophy, believed that religion is a portrait not of how the cosmos works but of how the human mind worksâof what men and women want and need. His view of life was worldly and sociable. Like many of the learned Scots, he revered the new science of Copernicus, Bacon, Galileo, Kepler, Boyle, and Newton; he believed in the experimental method and loathed superstition."
and
"Jeffersonâs ideal of sociability in the new republic was, according to Gary Wills, influenced by Hutcheson; Madison learned a great deal from both Humeâs political theories and Smithâs âinvisible handâ; Hamilton knew âThe Wealth of Nationsâ backward and forward; and all three campaigned successfully to make the separation of church and state a feature of the Constitution. Summing up the influence of the Scots, Buchan says, âIn demanding that experiment not inherited truth define the business of living, the Edinburgh philosophers stamped the West with its modern scientific and provisional character. They created a world that tended towards the egalitarian and, within reason, the democratic. Their prestige in English-speaking lands was carried on the wave of British and American expansion into every corner of the world.â
http://www.newyorker.com/critics/atlarge/?041011crat_atlarge
-- Doug _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
