Online Encyclopedia

LORD JAMES BURNETT MONBODDO (1714-1799)

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Originally appearing in Volume V18, Page 693 of the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.
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LORD JAMES BURNETT MONBODDO (1714-1799)  , Scottish judge and anthropologist, was born in 1714 at Monboddo in Kincardineshire . Ile studied at Aberdeen, and, after passing his law
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examinations in
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Edinburgh, he quickly took a leading position at the Scottish bar, being made a Lord of Session in 1767 with the title of Lord Monboddo . Many of his eccentricities, both of conduct and opinion, appear less remarkable to us than they did to his contemporaries; moreover, he seems to have heightened the impression of them by his humorous sallies in their defence . He may have had other reasons than the practice of the ancients for dining
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late and performing his journeys on horseback instead of in a
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carriage . He is remembered more particularly for his writings on human origins . In his Antient Metaphysics (1779–1799), Monboddo conceived man as gradually elevating himself from an animal condition, in which his mind is immersed in
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matter, to a state in which mind acts independently of
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body . In his equally voluminous
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work, The Origin and Progress of Language (1773), he brought man under the same
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species as the orang-outang . He traced the gradual
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elevation of man to the social state, which he conceived as a natural
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process determined by " the necessities of human
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life." He looked on language (which is not " natural " to man in the sense of being necessary to his self-preservation) as a consequence of his social state . His views about the origin of society and language and the faculties by which man is distinguished from the brutes have many curious points of contact with Darwinism and neo-Kantianism . His idea of studying man as one of the animals, and of
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collecting facts about savage tribes to throw
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light on the problems of
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civilization, bring him into contact with the one, and his intimate knowledge of Greek philosophy with the other . In both respects Monboddo was far in advance of his neighbours . His studied abstinence from
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fine writing—from " the rhetorical and poetical style fashionable among writers of the
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present day "—on such subjects as he handled confirmed the idea of his contemporaries that he was only an eccentric Phosphorus pentoxide (P206) Cerium
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oxide (Ce203) .

Lanthanum oxide (La203)

Didymium oxide (Di203) Yttrium oxide (Yt20a) Thorium oxide (Th02)
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Silica (SiO2) . . . . Alumina (Al203) Iron oxide (Fe203) Lime (CaO) ..
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Water (H20) . 1.23 3.21 .11 concocter of supremely absurd paradoxes . He died on the 26th of May 1799 . Boswell's Life of Johnson gives an account of the lexicographer's visit to Burnett at Monboddo, and is full of references to the natural contemporary view of a man who thought that the human
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race could be descended from monkeys .

End of Article: LORD JAMES BURNETT MONBODDO (1714-1799)
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