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Biography of Adam Ferguson
Name: Adam Ferguson
Birth Date: 1723
Death Date: 1816
Place of Birth: Logierat, Perthshire, Scotland
Nationality: Scottish
Gender: Male
Occupations: philosopher, historian, chaplain
Adam Ferguson
The Scottish philosopher, moralist, and historian Adam Ferguson (1723-1816) produced a number of notable works concerning the nature of society. He is regarded as one of the founders of modern sociology.Adam Ferguson was born in Logierat, Perthshire. In 1739 he went to the University of St. Andrews, where he received his master of arts degree in 1742. Determined on a clerical career, he began to study divinity at St. Andrews, continuing these studies in Edinburgh. In 1745 he became first deputy chaplain and later chaplain of the Black Watch Regiment, but in 1754 he left the regiment and abandoned the ministry.In 1757 Ferguson replaced David Hume as librarian to the Advocates Library in Edinburgh. In 1759 he became professor of natural philosophy at the University of Edinburgh and in 1764 was appointed to the coveted chair of "pneumatics [mental philosophy] and moral philosophy." Ferguson held this post until 1785 and retired from university life soon after. For …showed first 150 words…
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…showed last 150 words…more prone to conflict. Commerce breeds economic competition, and the state system breeds war. Although some benefits do result from conflict--industrial growth, scientific and esthetic advances--Ferguson stressed that, when the division of labor results in economic class stratification and when warfare becomes the province of the professional military, a society faces decay and despotism and conflict is then no longer present. It should be noted that Ferguson was one of the first thinkers to point to conflict as a positive factor in human development and to argue that such conflict is more pronounced in civilized societies than in primitive ones. Further Reading Ferguson's An Essay on the History of Civil Society was recently edited with an introduction by Duncan Forbes (1966). Two useful studies of Ferguson are William C. Lehman, Adam Ferguson and the Beginnings of Modern Sociology (1930), and David Kettler, The Social and Political Thought of Adam Ferguson (1965).
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