Adam Ferguson

Adam Ferguson was a philosopher of the Scottish Enlightenment, and is sometimes called ‘the father of modern sociology’.  He served as a chaplain in the Black Watch (1745-54) and may have seen action at the battle of Fontenoy. He resigned from the ministry before becoming professor of natural philosophy at Edinburgh from 1759, transferring to the chair of mental and moral philosophy in 1764.

Adam Ferguson saw man as a social being whose ‘supreme end’ was to achieve or attempt to achieve perfection. He was influenced by Francis Hutcheson (professor of moral philosophy at Glasgow 1729–46), and his network of peers included Thomas Reid and Adam Smith; and with Joseph Black and David Hume he was a member of the Poker Club.

Although Ferguson the sociologist would have agreed with Alexander Pope that ‘the proper study of mankind is man’, he did not recoil from religion in the way that David Hume did.  For him religion was part of the programme for a Science of Man. 

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