Edinburgh alumnus Dugald Stewart was an influential force in the Scottish common sense school of philosophy

We all have that one friend who is incredibly book smart but has absolutely no common sense at all. They can tell you the square root of Pi but can’t tell their left from their right. But every now and then you find someone who has plenty of book smarts and common sense to boot.

Dugald Stewart was one of those people.

Largely influenced by Thomas Reid’s ‘An Inquiry into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense’, this Edinburgh alumnus was not only a mathematician and philosopher but also an advocate of common sense.

Read more about the namesake of our PPLS building here at the University of Edinburgh:

The University of Edinburgh – Alumni in history: Dugald Stewart