Join the March to Enlightenment

Join the March to Enlightenment, an opportunity to learn about and celebrate Scotland’s role in establishing the freedom to think for oneself.

The ‘Scottish miracle’
how the Scottish Enlightenment laid the foundations for our modern life

Scottish thinkers played a pivotal role in the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century, yet in today’s Scotland we seem largely to have forgotten our proud history. The Enlightenment offered tolerance, rationality, observation and evidence in the place of dogma and superstition. Industrious people were free to think, explore and discover, opening the way for great developments in science, medicine, industry, political democracy and education. Scottish figures were at the core of the Enlightenment – so much so, that it is often called the ‘Scottish miracle’.

12.00 Gathering, to the skirl o’ the pipes by a Scottish band. 12.30 Street theatre – watch an enactment of the trial of the last person to be hanged for blasphemy in Scotland (Thomas Aikenhead in 1697) and hear how this was in sharp contrast to the emergence of the Scottish Enlightenment just a few years later on. 1.00 March from Holyrood up the Royal Mile, following a pipe band and accompanied by key figures of the Scottish Enlightenment to the statue of David Hume, opposite St. Giles Cathedral. 1.30 Learn about the legacy of David Hume and what it means for us today from prominent Scottish figures. Until 16.00 The Humanist Society Scotland will have an information stall at the statue.