John Veitch Scottish

Scotland

Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...

 poet

Poet

A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...

, philosopher, and historian

Historian

A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the study of all history in time. If the individual is...

, son of a Peninsular War

Peninsular War

The Peninsular War was a war between France and the allied powers of Spain, the United Kingdom, and Portugal for control of the Iberian Peninsula during the Napoleonic Wars. The war began when French and Spanish armies crossed Spain and invaded Portugal in 1807. Then, in 1808, France turned on its...

 veteran, was born at Peebles

Peebles

Peebles is a burgh in the committee area of Tweeddale, in the Scottish Borders, lying on the River Tweed. According to the 2001 Census, the population was 8,159.-History:...

, and educated at Edinburgh University

University of Edinburgh

The University of Edinburgh, founded in 1583, is a public research university located in Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland, and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The university is deeply embedded in the fabric of the city, with many of the buildings in the historic Old Town belonging to the university...

.

He was assistant lecturer successively to Sir William Hamilton and Alexander Campbell Fraser

Alexander Campbell Fraser

Alexander Campbell Fraser was a Scottish philosopher.Born at Ardchattan, Argyll, the son of the parish minister, he was educated at the universities of Glasgow and Edinburgh, where, from 1846 to 1856, he was professor of Logic at New College...

 (1856–60). In 1860 he was appointed to the chair of logic

Logic

In philosophy, Logic is the formal systematic study of the principles of valid inference and correct reasoning. Logic is used in most intellectual activities, but is studied primarily in the disciplines of philosophy, mathematics, semantics, and computer science...

, metaphysics

Metaphysics

Metaphysics is a branch of philosophy concerned with explaining the fundamental nature of being and the world, although the term is not easily defined. Traditionally, metaphysics attempts to answer two basic questions in the broadest possible terms:...

 and rhetoric

Rhetoric

Rhetoric is the art of discourse, an art that aims to improve the facility of speakers or writers who attempt to inform, persuade, or motivate particular audiences in specific situations. As a subject of formal study and a productive civic practice, rhetoric has played a central role in the Western...

 at St Andrews

University of St Andrews

The University of St Andrews, informally referred to as "St Andrews", is the oldest university in Scotland and the third oldest in the English-speaking world after Oxford and Cambridge. The university is situated in the town of St Andrews, Fife, on the east coast of Scotland. It was founded between...

, and in 1864 to the corresponding chair at Glasgow.

In philosophy an intuitionist

Intuitionism

In the philosophy of mathematics, intuitionism, or neointuitionism , is an approach to mathematics as the constructive mental activity of humans. That is, mathematics does not consist of analytic activities wherein deep properties of existence are revealed and applied...

, he dismissed the idealist

Idealism

In philosophy, idealism is the family of views which assert that reality, or reality as we can know it, is fundamentally mental, mentally constructed, or otherwise immaterial. Epistemologically, idealism manifests as a skepticism about the possibility of knowing any mind-independent thing...

 arguments with some abruptness, and thereby lost much of the influence gained by the force of his personal character. He will be remembered chiefly for his work on Border literature and antiquities. See Memoir by his niece, Mary RL Bryce (1896).

Publications

• translations of Descartes
  René Descartes
  René Descartes ; was a French philosopher and writer who spent most of his adult life in the Dutch Republic. He has been dubbed the 'Father of Modern Philosophy', and much subsequent Western philosophy is a response to his writings, which are studied closely to this day...
  
  ' Discours de la méthode (1850) and Méditationes (1852)
• an edition of Sir William Hamilton's lectures with memoir (1869, in collaboration with HL Mansel
  Henry Longueville Mansel
  The Very Reverend Henry Longueville Mansel, D.D. was an English philosopher and ecclesiastic.He was born at Cosgrove, Northamptonshire .He was educated at Merchant Taylors' School, London and St John's College, Oxford...
  
  )
• Tweed, and other Poems (1875)
• The History and Poetry of the Scottish Border (1877; ed. 1893)
• Hamilton (1882)
• Institutes of Logic (1885)
• The Feeling for Nature in Scottish Poetry (1887)
• Knowing and Being (1889)
• Merlin (1889)
• Dualism and Monism (1895)
• Border Essays (1896).

External links