Brown, THOMAS

Brown, THOMAS, a Scottish metaphysician, born in 1778 at the manse of Kirkmabreck, Kirkcudbrightshire, went to Edinburgh in 1792, and for several years attended the university, though without ever completing the arts curriculum. He began the study of the law, but shortly abandoned it for medicine, and became in 1806 the partner of Dr Gregory in his large practice. His strong bent, however, was for literature and philosophical speculation. At the age of twenty he had published a refutation of Darwin's Zoonomia, and he contributed at the outset to the Edinburgh Review. In 1804 appeared his essay on Cause and Effect, in which he holds that there is nothing in a cause but the fact of immediate and invariable antecedence to the change called its effect. Dugald Stewart, professor of Moral Philosophy in the university, being obliged, from bad health, to retire in 1810, Brown was appointed colleague and successor, which office he continued to discharge till his death during a visit to London, 2d April 1820. He was popular as a professor; and his Lectures, published after his death, reached its 19th edition in 1851, although the book has now fallen into neglect. He also wrote a good deal of rather indifferent poetry. Brown attempted to overturn the psychological system of his predecessors, Reid and Stewart, and to substitute a new and simplified scheme of mental phenomena. The greater part of this new philosophy was the production of his first session as professor, the writing of each lecture being begun on the evening previous to its delivery. A philosophic system thus improvised could not be but crude and inconsistent, however acute and imaginative its author might be. From their subtlety and originality his works were valuable in their time, as suggesting and advancing the solution of many problems; but the lack of a coherent system, due to their incompleteness, will largely account for their having been superseded by later writings. Brown's chief contribution to psychology is the establishment of a sixth or muscular sense.