Adam Ferguson, philosopher (1723 - 1816)

Adam Ferguson was a philosopher of the Scottish Enlightenment, and is sometimes called ‘the father of modern sociology’.

Ferguson served as a chaplain in the Black Watch  from 1745 to 1754 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.

With Joseph Black and David Hume he was a member of the Poker Club, an Edinburgh association of Enlightenment figures established to promote the cause of a national militia in Scotland.

Although Ferguson the sociologist would have agreed with poet 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.

Picture credit: Photo of plaque of Adam Ferguson on his gravestone in St Andrew's Cathedral cemetery. Reproduced with permission from Kirsten Brorson, Historiological Notes.