Capital of the Mind: How Edinburgh Changed the World

Buchan, James

ISBN 10: 1841586390 / ISBN 13: 9781841586397

Edité par Birlinn Ltd, 2007

Item in good condition. Textbooks may not include supplemental items i.e. CDs, access codes etc. N° de réf. du vendeur 00049377597

Synopsis :

How did a notoriously poor, alcoholic, violent and smelly town, consisting of 40,000 inhabitants, make such an impression on its age and on ours? So that Voltaire wrote, with more than a dash of malice that 'today it is from Scotland that we get rules of taste in all the arts, from epic poetry to gardening'? The leading lights of the Scottish Enlightenment - David Hume, Adam Smith, Adam Ferguson, William Cullen and James Hutton - transformed the way we treat our perceptions and feelings as well as mechanical processes, sickness and health, trade, money, relations between the sexes, the purposes of existence and government. In just fifty years, Edinburgh produced more philosophical landmarks than a town of its size since the Athens of Socrates. In an account of exceptionally close focus, James Buchan resurrects every aspect of eighteenth-century Edinburgh, and shows how a succession of disasters demolished old systems of thought and behaviour to set Edinburgh's men and women off in strange new directions. Capital of the Mind opens a fascinating window on a glorious time when Edinburgh was the most beautiful and philosophical city in Europe.

À propos de l?auteur: James Buchan is both a leading novelist and a major historian. He won the Whitbread First Novel Award and the Guardian Fiction Prize, and his controversial philosophy of money, Frozen Desire, won the Duff Cooper Award.

Détails bibliographiques

Titre : Capital of the Mind: How Edinburgh Changed ...
Éditeur : Birlinn Ltd
Date d'édition : 2007
Reliure : Couverture souple
Etat : Acceptable