George Davie writes in his preface:
'A sequel to The Democratic Intellect: Scotland and her Universities in the Nineteenth Century, the present book contains the paradoxical fact that at the end of World War I, the long continued and deliberate movement away from a university education of a generalist type, peculiar to Scotland, and towards a more specialising system, similar to that in other countries, was suddenly put into reverse. Instead of doing away with the inherited order, so as to put the practical on a level with the theoretical, why did the Scots go out of their way to re-establish the primacy of intellect?'
Dr Davie answers this question through an informed consideration of the educational and philosophical views of the classicist John Burnet, the philosophers Norman Kemp Smith and John Anderson, and the poet Hugh MacDiarmid. The argument put forward here, which advocates a general and critical education, will be of interest not only to philosophers, historians, educationalists and psychologists, but also to anyone concerned with the problems posed by contemporary scientific activity, which is at present distanced - in the name of utilitarianism - from general critical thought.
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