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Although George Turnbull was a recognized member of the European republic of letters in the second quarter of the eighteenth century, his reputation as an exponent of the moderate Enlightenment was eclipsed soon after his death in 1748. By the turn of the nineteenth century, he had come to be regarded as a figure of little intellectual significance. In 1802, for example, Dugald Stewart indicated that, at most, Turnbull deserved mention as the teacher of Thomas Reid but was otherwise of no interest.1 Moreover, Stewart’s later assertion that the “rise and progress of the Metaphysical Philosophy of Scotland” originated in “the lectures of Dr. Francis Hutcheson, in the University of Glasgow” meant that Turnbull’s role in the formation of the Scottish Enlightenment was overlooked by those nineteenth-century writers who championed the merits of the Scottish “school” of philosophy, with the notable exception of James McCosh. McCosh cast Turnbull alongside Hutcheson as a founder of the Scottish “school,” yet his positive assessment of Turnbull was largely ignored.2 Consequently, Turnbull slipped from view until the latter part of the twentieth century, when David Fate Norton stimulated interest in Turnbull’s philosophical writings by situating them in the context of Scottish responses to moral and cognitive scepticism. Turnbull’s writings on art theory, education, and natural law also began to receive the attention they deserve, as did his teaching at Marischal College Aberdeen.3 Nevertheless, Turnbull remained a shadowy
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figure because a number of basic biographical facts had not been established and important facets of his thought had not been explored.
The Travels and Travails of a Man of Letters
James McCosh was the first scholar to research the details of Turnbull’s life and writings. But his biography is flawed because he did not have access to some of the most valuable sources of information regarding Turnbull’s life, including the surviving correspondence published below. These sources enable us to construct a richer narrative of his life and the context of his work.
George Turnbull was born on 11 July 1698 in Alloa, near Stirling, the son of the clergyman George Turnbull the elder. The younger Turnbull was probably expected to enter the ministry and was sent to the University of Edinburgh in 1711, where he likely finished his courses in the spring of 1716.4 He did not graduate formally with his Master of Arts degree after completing his course work and in 1717 entered Edinburgh’s divinity school. While studying divinity, he may have been one of the founding members of the Rankenian Club.5 In the Club, he was close to his fellow divinity student Robert Wallace, the preacher and later minister William Wishart, the surgeon George Young, and the Edinburgh Professor of Universal History Charles Mackie, although each of these friendships later cooled.6 Apparently disillusioned with a career in the Church of Scotland, Turnbull instead sought employment in the Scottish universities and was elected on 14 April 1721 as a regent at Marischal College Aberdeen.7
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At Marischal, Turnbull joined a phalanx of young, innovative colleagues, including the distinguished mathematician and leading Newtonian, Colin Maclaurin (1698–1746). Maclaurin was, however, unhappy at Marischal and Turnbull shared his friend’s disaffection with academic life at the college. His correspondence shows that in May 1723 he ventured to ask Lord Molesworth to help him find a post as a travelling tutor but without success. In 1724–25 a political battle within the college, which involved both Maclaurin and Turnbull, precipitated their departure. In the spring of 1725 Maclaurin moved to the Edinburgh Chair of Mathematics, while Turnbull took an unofficial leave to become the tutor to Alexander Udny.8 Turnbull and Udny travelled to Groningen via London in the autumn of 1725, but Turnbull was forced to return to Marischal because he had not been granted a formal leave.9 In January 1726 he was again lecturing and took his class (which included Udny) to graduation in April. Since he was back in Aberdeen in the autumn of 1726, it would seem that he was neither retained by the Udnys nor able to find another position as a tutor. During the ensuing session he put himself forward as a candidate for the vacant Chair of Ecclesiastical History at St. Andrews and solicited the support of Maclaurin and Charles Mackie in Edinburgh.10 However, his bid for the Chair failed and he decided to abandon academe, if only temporarily. He resigned from Marischal in the spring of 1727 and was given the first honorary Doctor of Laws degree awarded by the college upon his departure.11
Having left Aberdeen, Turnbull became a tutor to Andrew Wauchope of Niddrie. To prepare for travel and study on the continent, Wauchope
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was enrolled in Mackie’s history class at the University of Edinburgh in the autumn of 1727.12 Three years later we find Turnbull and his pupil in Groningen, where Turnbull attended classes on natural and Roman law.13 Turnbull may have kept up his legal studies in the hope of securing another academic appointment because he sounded out Mackie about the possibility of negotiating a deal with Mackie’s colleague William Scott which would have seen Turnbull succeed Scott as the Edinburgh Professor of Moral Philosophy.14 But this scheme also proved abortive and he continued in the employ of the Wauchope family. By October 1730, Turnbull and Wauchope had left the United Provinces and were in Paris en route to Italy. In the French capital Turnbull socialized with Dr. (later Sir) John Pringle and apparently visited the Chevalier Ramsay as well as other scholars to whom he was introduced by letters from Colin Maclaurin.15 A year later, Turnbull was in the south of France and disillusioned with the life of a travelling tutor. Although he was enjoying the company of another tutor, the Cambridge classicist Jeremiah Markland, he reported to Mackie that he would not be going to Italy as initially planned and that he expected to be in England by the spring of 1732. Turnbull was anxious to find another pupil and asked Mackie to put out feelers on his behalf.16 Mackie did so, only for Turnbull to reject the offer of a position when he arrived back in London in May 1732. Moreover, Turnbull now chose not to return to Scotland, presumably because he believed his prospects were better in England.17
Turnbull’s last surviving letters to Mackie speak of repeated disappointment and chart the decline of his friendships with Mackie and Maclaurin. By September 1733 Maclaurin was no longer responding to his letters, and there appears to have been no further contact between Mackie and Turnbull after this date.18 Turnbull was now entirely reliant upon the assistance of
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his English patrons and his circle of fellow Scots in the metropolis, which included the poet James Thomson, the physician Alexander Stuart, and his old friend from Edinburgh William Wishart.19 Although still willing to be a tutor, he decided to take orders in the Anglican Church. To that end, he matriculated at Exeter College Oxford in 1733 and was granted a Bachelor of Civil Law degree.20 He may have been encouraged in his decision by the Low Churchman and soon to be Bishop of Derry, Thomas Rundle, who had affiliations with Exeter College and was an associate of James Thomson, William Wishart, and one of Turnbull’s English patrons Charles Talbot.21 Turnbull’s defense of the credibility of Christ’s miracles and his attack on the Deist Matthew Tindal in his early pamphlets on religion would have received a sympathetic reading from Rundle, who likewise defended the reasonableness of Christianity against Deists like Tindal. Moreover, Turnbull’s pamphlets would have put him in good stead with Low Churchmen more generally in his search for preferment. Nevertheless, Turnbull failed to find long-term employment in the years 1733 to 1735 and was obliged to accept an offer to become a travelling tutor for the future third earl of Rockingham, Thomas Watson.22 Unfortunately their Grand Tour is poorly documented. The travel diaries of Alexander Cunyngham (later Sir Alexander Dick) record that he and the artist Allan Ramsay socialized with Watson and Turnbull in Rome in December 1736.23 Otherwise we know little about their itinerary or the duration of their trip.
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Prior to leaving London, Turnbull subscribed to the fledgling Society for the Encouragement of Learning, which eventually began formal meetings in May 1736. Initially the Society’s membership was largely made up of antiquarians and Scots living in London, leavened with a few Jacobites, physicians, and men of science.24 Turnbull’s involvement in the Society marks a turning point in his career, for he now began to move in the circles of virtuosi and antiquarians in the metropolis centered on Dr. Richard Mead. It is unclear when Turnbull first met Mead, but by the late 1730s Turnbull had access to Mead’s spectacular library and collections. Turnbull cultivated Mead’s patronage, not least in dedicating his Three Dissertations (1740) to Mead.25 Mead, however, rebuffed Turnbull’s overtures. Consequently, Turnbull remained on the periphery of the metropolitan antiquarian community.26 By contrast, in 1737 Turnbull succeeded in befriending Mead’s close associate, the Rev. Thomas Birch. Turnbull probably first encountered Birch in the Society for the Encouragement of Learning and, in 1739, Turnbull turned to Birch for help with his ordination as an Anglican priest.27 Even though Turnbull did not understand the mechanics of the process, he managed to be ordained by one of the leading Low Churchmen of the day, the Bishop of Winchester, Benjamin Hoadly, to whom he had apparently been introduced by the Bishop’s protege and Birch’s friend, Arthur Ashley Sykes.28
Faced with an uncertain future, Turnbull turned to his pen to improve
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his finances. In 1739 he published a greatly expanded third edition of his popular pamphlet, A Philosophical Enquiry concerning the Connexion betwixt the Doctrines and Miracles of Jesus Christ, as well as his Treatise on Ancient Painting. The year 1740 saw the appearance of The Principles of Moral and Christian Philosophy, his Three Dissertations, and An Impartial Enquiry into the Moral Character of Jesus Christ. A spate of books followed in 1741, including his heavily annotated translation of Johann Gottlieb Heineccius’s A Methodical System of Universal Law, his repackaging of the plates from the Treatise of Ancient Painting under the title A Curious Collection of Ancient Paintings, and his student edition of Marcus Junianus Justinus’s history. Then, in 1742, he produced his last major publications, his Observations upon Liberal Education, in all its Branches and his abortive translation of Blainville’s Travels. Most of these works reveal that Turnbull was desperately, and largely unsuccessfully, searching for patronage. He dedicated his books to a number of prominent public figures, notably his old acquaintance the Bishop of Derry, Thomas Rundle, and the Duke of Cumberland. The Duke did not accept Turnbull as a client, but his brother and rival, Frederick Lewis, the Prince of Wales, appointed Turnbull as his chaplain in 1741. Turnbull moved to Kew, where the Prince had his primary residence outside of London, and set himself up as a schoolmaster.29 Rundle rewarded Turnbull in 1742 by making him rector of the remote rural parish of Drumachose, County Derry, to which he apparently travelled since he was in Dublin, probably in 1742 or 1743.30
None of Turnbull’s correspondence survives from this point onward, and hence the details of his life become increasingly obscure. We know that he made a further trip on the Grand Tour with Horatio Walpole, the eldest son of the politician Horatio or Horace Walpole.31 Turnbull and Walpole
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set out in October 1744 and visited Milan and Turin before residing in Florence from June 1745 until April 1746. For much of the time Turnbull suffered from a debilitating attack of what he described as “rheumatism,” a condition that had already afflicted him in 1739.32 His illness became so severe that in January 1746 the British resident in Florence, Sir Horatio Mann, confided to the young Walpole’s cousin, Horace Walpole, that Turnbull was “in a bad way, and I don’t believe will recover.”33 But despite being incapacitated, Turnbull went to Rome with Walpole because he had been engaged by Horatio Walpole senior and the Duke of Newcastle to gather intelligence about the Jacobite uprising launched in Britain in the summer of 1745. After a period in the Eternal City, Turnbull and Walpole went on to Naples before returning to England in the spring of 1747.34 Turnbull then drops entirely from view until his death from unspecified causes in the Hague on 31 January 1748. What took him to the United Provinces is unknown, but it is said that he was again spying on exiled Jacobites for the British government.35
Turnbull’s Place in the Enlightenment
Turnbull’s intellectual identity was defined by his formative experiences as a student at Edinburgh and his understanding of the relations between the different branches of human learning. At the turn of the eighteenth century, proponents of what we now identify as Enlightenment in Europe were consolidating their hold over the cultural institutions of Edinburgh.36 Thanks to the Gregory family, the University became a bastion of Newtonianism in the 1690s, while other parts of the curriculum were gradually updated, especially following the adoption of the professorial system of teaching in 1708. When Turnbull arrived in 1711, he would have encountered
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a residue of scholasticism mixed with newer currents of thought, including the natural law theories of Grotius and Pufendorf. He would also have been given a good grounding in Greek and Latin; significantly, his Latin professor, Laurence Dundas, apparently used Justin’s epitome of Pompeius Trogus’s Philippic Histories, which Turnbull subsequently edited.37 Turnbull then studied divinity under the Principal, the Rev. William Wishart, and the Professor of Divinity, the Rev. William Hamilton. Wishart was an orthodox Calvinist who had been sympathetic to the Covenanters in his early years, whereas Hamilton was said to have instilled in his pupils “moderation and a liberal manner of thinking upon all subjects.”38 Outside of the classroom, Hamilton’s moderate form of Presbyterianism seems to have inspired the discussion of religious topics in the Rankenian Club.
We know little about the proceedings of the Club. Comments made by Robert Wodrow in the mid-1720s show that the Rankenians were known to be critical of orthodox Calvinism.39 A manuscript dating from before 1720 by Wallace challenging the use of “Creeds or Confessions of faith” and Turnbull’s contemporaneous manuscript on civil religion published below, indicate that they debated whether the state or a national church can legitimately regulate religious belief.40 These manuscripts show that the Rankenians registered not only the case for religious toleration advanced by John Locke, but also the arguments involved in the Bangorian Controversy sparked by Benjamin Hoadly and the disputes over subscription to formulas such as the Westminster Confession of Faith that had recently flared up in Ireland, England, and Scotland.41 Moreover, Turnbull’s letter
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to John Toland written in 1718 (below, pp. 3–4) suggests that the club members were exploring the writings of Toland and other English Deists and flirting with radical Enlightenment ideas. The place of religion in society and the credibility of Christianity continued to preoccupy Turnbull over the next two decades. His letters to Molesworth show that in private he echoed the Deists in railing against priestcraft and the imposition of creeds, and that he had read Anthony Collins.42 But Turnbull was also a theist who maintained that the design and order of the moral and natural realms evinced in the work of Newton refuted “atheism,” in both its ancient and modern forms.43 Moreover, in the early 1720s he was already familiar with the debate over miracles sparked by Spinoza’s Theological-Political Treatise (1670), which rumbled across Europe for a century.
Turnbull entered this debate in A Philosophical Enquiry concerning the Connexion betwixt the Doctrines and Miracles of Jesus Christ, which appeared anonymously in 1731 while he was on the continent. The Enquiry was ostensibly a letter written “to a Friend” dated 10 April 1726 (that is, while he was still teaching at Marischal College) and signed “Philanthropos” (lover of humanity). In the “Advertisement” to the first two impressions of the pamphlet he explained that he had delayed publication because he had
expect[ed] to see a Discourse upon Miracles, promised by the Author of the Grounds and Reasons of the Christian Religion, [but] does not know whether that Discourse is at last published or not, [or] whether a late Book entitled, Christianity as old as the Creation, takes any notice of miracles; and is, in one word, an utter stranger to what has been publish’d in England for two years past.44
The “Author” referred to here was Anthony Collins, and Turnbull’s puzzlement was genuine because Collins mentions his “Discourse upon Miracles”
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in The Scheme of Literal Prophecy Considered (1726), but the “Discourse” remained unpublished at Collins’s death in December 1729.45 The Enquiry was thus most likely initially conceived as a response to Collins’s argument that miracles were no proof of the truth of Christianity, which he likewise advanced in A Discourse of the Grounds and Reasons of the Christian Religion (1724) and the Scheme. Turnbull may also have been prompted to publish because of the furor over Thomas Woolston’s six discourses on Christ’s miracles published in the years 1727 to 1729. Woolston’s pamphlets, his imprisonment for blasphemy in 1729, and the deluge of attacks on him ensured any contribution to the dispute over miracles a wide readership, which the Enquiry evidently enjoyed. And although Turnbull did not fundamentally alter the miracles debate the way Hume later did, his ingenious argument that Christ’s miracles provided “experimental” or empirical proof of the truth of His teachings was a striking attempt to show that belief in the miraculous foundations of Christianity was as rational as a belief in the truth of Newtonian natural philosophy.46
Turnbull and his bookseller likewise took advantage of the controversy aroused by Matthew Tindal’s Christianity as Old as the Creation (1730) by publishing Christianity Neither False nor Useless, Tho’ Not as Old as the Creation as a pendant to the Enquiry. Turnbull here insists that in humanity’s fallen state, unaided reason can discover the basic principles of morality, but not establish the truth of the doctrines of the resurrection, a future state, the forgiveness of sins, and divine rewards and punishments. These doctrines, he argues, are necessary to “enforce sufficiently upon [humankind] obedience” to the law of nature; hence we need revelation to assist us in the pursuit of virtue. Against Tindal, he maintained that the moral teachings of Christianity amount to more than simply the dictates of natural law, and that miracles are not only credible but also provide us with the necessary evidence of the truth of revelation.47 Christianity Neither False nor Useless was thus not merely a cynical attempt to promote the Enquiry
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among readers of Tindal.48 Rather, Turnbull’s pamphlet is intellectually significant because it underlines his debt to Samuel Clarke’s blend of rational Christianity and moderate Enlightenment.
Turnbull’s indebtedness to Clarke resurfaced in his last pamphlet, An Impartial Enquiry into the Moral Character of Jesus Christ (1740). Turnbull elaborated on Clarke’s assertion that Christ’s spotless character showed that he was “neither an Imposter nor an Enthusiast,” and that Jesus’ moral integrity “add[s] great Weight and Authority to his Doctrine, and make[s] his own Testimony concerning himself exceedingly credible.”49 Using the epistolary form, Turnbull addresses himself to a Deist and endeavors to persuade this imaginary friend that Christ was an even greater teacher of morality than Socrates and that Christ’s exemplary behavior and good works attested to his divine mission. Turnbull was implicitly arguing that Christ’s unimpeachable character and his miracles constitute “extrinsic” evidence for the truth of Christianity which complements the “intrinsic” evidence derived from the excellence of his teachings. Together, this evidence suffices to persuade the candid unbeliever of the reasonableness of Christian belief.50 With the Impartial Enquiry (and The Principles of Moral and Christian Philosophy), therefore, Turnbull’s protracted dialogue with Deism and his public defense of the reasonableness of Christianity (and hence of the moderate Enlightenment) came to an unresolved end.
Turnbull’s apologetic agenda in his writings on religion was set while he was a student in Edinburgh. His Aberdeen graduation theses, which document
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the transformation of the curriculum at Marischal College in the 1720s, likewise show that his teaching reflected his studies at the University of Edinburgh and his conversations in the Rankenian Club.51 The theses demonstrate that much like his colleagues he was conversant with a wide range of ancient and modern writers and that he incorporated the ideas of Bacon, Descartes, Locke, and Newton into his lectures. But the theses also indicate that his courses differed significantly from those of the other regents. First, his topics for student disputations contain little on metaphysics and logic, which suggests that he limited the time spent on these subjects. It seems, therefore, that he went further than some of his colleagues in removing scholastic remnants from the curriculum. Second, as noted, the theses reveal his preoccupation with countering the threat of irreligion. Such apologetics was by no means novel, for the primary aim of a university education was to inculcate sound moral and religious principles. The formulation of his argument was, however, original because he relied exclusively on the argument from design to refute atheism and he blended Newton’s theocentric vision of the physical universe with Shaftesbury’s conception of a benevolent natural and moral order to illustrate the design in nature.52 Third, the disputation topics set in 1726 imply that his teaching of ethics and politics was framed in terms of the natural law tradition. Regents in the two Aberdeen colleges had drawn on the writings of Grotius and Pufendorf from the latter part of the seventeenth century onward, but it was Turnbull (along with his fellow regent at Marischal David Verner) who did most to recast the study of moral philosophy in the mold of natural law.53 Last, Turnbull was the first Scottish regent or professor to state explicitly that moral philosophy ought to be studied using the same method as that employed by Newton in natural philosophy. Much had been made
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in the natural law tradition of the methodological unity of the two main branches of philosophy, and there is little doubt about Turnbull’s debt to Grotius, Pufendorf, and Richard Cumberland in this regard. Nevertheless, his 1723 thesis struck a new note when he appealed to Query 31 of Newton’s Opticks to justify his claim that the moral realm ought to be investigated empirically using the methods of analysis and synthesis.54 Turnbull was thus an early promoter of the Newtonian form of scientism adopted by successive generations of moralists not only in Aberdeen but throughout the European Enlightenment more generally.55
Like the Edinburgh virtuosi who shaped the early Scottish Enlightenment, Turnbull believed that all branches of human learning formed a coherent and unified system which he likened to a tree of knowledge.56 This view underwrote his belief in the methodological unity of the natural and moral sciences, and it also enabled him to delineate the cognitive relations between his historical and antiquarian interests and his broader philosophical concerns. His fascination with history and Roman antiquities was something that he probably originally shared with his fellow Rankenian Charles Mackie. At Edinburgh (and elsewhere) history was taught as an adjunct to law, so that for Turnbull and Mackie the study of these subjects was closely intertwined.57 Once Turnbull became a travelling tutor his taste for “the Study of the Antients” deepened, while his contacts with antiquarians and historians in London turned his researches in new directions.58 His work on antiquities and history was also deeply influenced by French models, as seen in his Three Dissertations and his edition of Justin.59 These late works register his indebtedness to the critical scholarship championed
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by the Parisian Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres and to the rationale for the study of history articulated by the noted historian and pedagogue Charles Rollin. The Three Dissertations pays tribute to Richard Mead’s collection: one of the engravings Turnbull included illustrates the celebrated ancient painting owned by Mead that was taken to portray Augustus, Agrippa, Maecenas, and Horace, while the other depicts a bas relief of actors and a musician that had recently been uncovered in Rome, which Turnbull believed was worthy of Mead’s ownership.60 Two of the three essays which he translated from the Histoire et mémoires de l’Académie des inscriptions et belles lettres discussed antiquarian topics related to these engravings. The third described the notable collection of paintings and statues amassed in ancient Rome by the infamous Gaius Verres. Turnbull used this essay as a vehicle to state what he believed were the proper ends of collecting the remains of the past. According to Turnbull, true collectors like Mead sought to benefit the public by opening up their cabinets to foster “the ambition to excel in the Arts of Design” and to promote “the Study of polite Literature” among their fellow citizens. But in Britain their efforts to arouse the “natural Genius” of the nation were sadly hampered by the lack of institutions comparable to the state and provincial academies in France. Turnbull here echoed a common complaint among men of letters that the British government did far too little to foster the advancement of learning.61
Turnbull’s discussion of the value of historical knowledge in the preface to his edition of Justin’s History complements his extended treatment of the topic in his Observations upon Liberal Education.62 As in the Observations, he paid tribute to Rollin’s achievements as a historian and apologist for the study of history and, following Rollin and the humanist tradition, emphasized that historical knowledge is valuable insofar as it can be used to teach moral and political lessons.63 This view of the primarily didactic
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function of history—what has come to be known as “exemplar history”—is encapsulated in Lord Bolingbroke’s dictum “that history is philosophy teaching by examples how to conduct ourselves in all the situations of private and public life.”64 For Turnbull civil history was thus the grounding for ethics and politics just as natural history was for natural philosophy. Moreover, he insisted that the facts of both branches of history illustrate broader moral and religious principles, and it was the recognition that the facts serve such higher ends that for him distinguished the true historian and antiquary from those who were guilty of mere “cockle-shellship,” that is, the random stockpiling of objects and information with no eye for their meaning.65
Turnbull’s Treatise on Ancient Painting explored another facet of his tree of knowledge, namely the connection between philosophy and oratory, poetry, and painting. His discussion hinged on his claim that painting is a language that can be employed to express the truths discovered in the moral and natural sciences. Painting can thus play a role in a liberal education akin to that of history, for paintings can illustrate the workings of natural laws and moral principles and hence serve as “Samples or Experiments” of those laws and principles.66 In the selections reprinted below, however, we see that his main aim in the Treatise was not simply to justify the study of classical art. Rather, his reflections on the uses of the fine arts in education were the starting point for a general exposition of his pedagogical ideals, which he claimed mirrored those of the leading moralists of ancient Greece and Rome. This claim masked the extent to which his views on education reflected his own experiences as a pedagogue as well as his reading of more
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recent educational tracts.67 His belief that education ought to foster the cultivation of both private and public moral and political virtue could be traced back to the ancients, but it had also been forcefully enunciated by Shaftesbury and Molesworth in their calls for educational reform.68 Furthermore, Turnbull’s remarks on the educational rationale for foreign travel owed more to Molesworth’s preface to An Account of Denmark than to the writings of Greek or Roman authors.69 And although he credited the ancients with the map of learning that justified his scheme for a liberal education, his conception of a unified system of the arts and sciences was in fact the creation of modern thinkers and was something that he shared with fellow exponents of Enlightenment.70 In effect, the Treatise provided the ancient precedents for a thoroughly modern plan for a liberal education, and Turnbull’s deployment of erudition in the service of pedagogical reform illustrates how classical antiquity was used to underwrite Enlightenment in eighteenth-century Europe.
Who, then, was George Turnbull? His life fits the pattern of the “Scotsman on the make” seeking a career in London and exploiting the opportunities opened up by the Union of 1707.71 His ideas and values were those of the virtuosi who fostered the European Enlightenment. In Edinburgh, Turnbull and the Rankenians built on the cultural and institutional foundations laid by Sir Robert Sibbald and the generation who brought Enlightenment to Scotland. Their diverse inquiries in medicine, mathematics, natural and moral philosophy, history, chorography, and antiquarianism
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were shaped by their Baconian belief in the unity of all branches of human knowledge. Turnbull refashioned their view into his own tree of the arts and sciences. He immersed himself in the early Enlightenment debates over religion and politics, but he became increasingly fascinated by the textual and material remains of ancient Greece and Rome. Turnbull can thus be seen as an exemplar of the enlightened virtuoso.
