Scottish Realism

Scottish Realism is a 19th-century philosophical movement that emphasizes understanding the world through direct experience and empirical observation. It holds that reality exists independently of our perceptions and that knowledge comes from evidence gathered through our senses and reasoning. Thinkers like David Hume and Thomas Reid debated how we can reliably know anything about the external world, balancing skepticism with the belief that we can attain true knowledge. Scottish Realism thus underscores the importance of evidence and reason in forming our understanding of reality, advocating for a cautious but affirmative approach to human knowledge.