The science of human progress — what happened, why, and what it means.
Principal of the University of Edinburgh and Historiographer Royal for Scotland. His histories of Scotland, of Charles V, and of America sought always the general causes behind particular events. He was the first to practise what would later be called philosophical history — narrative animated by the search for the principles governing human progress.
Can help you study: Philosophical history, the Scottish Enlightenment approach to historiography, the stadial theory of progress, the history of Scotland, the history of the Americas, and impartiality as historical method.