The Papers of Thomas Reid (1710-1796) known as the Birkwood Collection.
(MSS. 2131/1-8)

Thomas Reid

Thomas Reid (1710-96) is internationally known as the chief representative of the Scottish School of Common Sense. Born near Aberdeen, Reid was a student at Marischal College. He was ordained into the Church of Scotland and became the minister of New Machar in Aberdeenshire. It was during this period that he studied Hume's Treatise, and by the time he was appointed to a Regentship at King's College Aberdeen, though his duties required him to teach a wide range of subjects, his principle interest lay in philosophy. In 1764 he was appointed Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Glasgow. His major works are An inquiry into the Human Mind on the Priniciples of Common Sense (1764), Essays on Intellectual Powers of Man (1785) and Essays on the Active Powers of Man (1788). These established him both as a trenchant critic of Hume and a major figure in the formulation of the Common Sense alternative.

Reid's philosophical ideas remain of great interest. They are marked by a striking lucidity of thought and expression.

Introduction to the collection

The collection comprises over 800 items relating to the writings and teachings of Thomas Reid. The manuscripts range from fair copies of papers on specific topics to miscellaneous research notes, abstracts of works read, and occasional mathematical calculations. The first interim listing provided for Aberdeen University Library was compiled by A. T. W. Liddell in 1958. The manuscripts had by this time already lost their original coherence, and Liddell 's identification of the relationship between different lecture notes and drafts of papers prompted the first efforts to re establish a logical sequence within the collection. This work was continued by D. Fate Norton, to the extent that in 1977 a new location list was provided, relating the recent physical rearrangements of the papers to that described in Liddell's catalogue.

New initiatives

However, in spite of the accepted reorganisation of the collection, the papers had not been adequately catalogued, until, in 1998, with support from the Carnegie Trust, the Reid Project, established by the Department of Philosophy, undertook, and has now successfully completed) a highly detailed catalogue of Reid's manuscripts. The work was undertaken by a full-time research assistant, Giovanni Grandi, with guidance supplied by an advisory board.

The digitised collection

The organisation of the present site (which has been constructed as part of the programme funded by the JFC's Initiative for Specialised Research Collections in the Humanities) replicates the eight major sections into which the papers were organised:

e.g. MS 2131/1-8.

Each section is further divided into sub-sections by use of Roman numerals:

e.g. MS 2131/6/I-V

Each sub-section is divided so as to describe discrete pieces:

For example, MS 2131/1/II/05 is a notebook numbered pp. 1-92; and each page of the notebook has been separately digitised.

Many of Reid's papers, however, were not paginated at the time of composition. In order to indicate the intended sequence within the digital files, their individual (file) names include a page numbering system (p01, p02 etc).

It remains an aim of the Department of Philosophy and Historic Collections to bring together, into a unified resource, in a single electronic environment, both the detailed catalogue and the digitised collection.

This site created and maintained by University of Aberdeen Historic Collections