Records of the Parliaments of Scotland
Overview
 
The Records of the Parliaments of Scotland to 1707 is a project of the Scottish Parliament
Scottish Parliament
The Scottish Parliament is the devolved national, unicameral legislature of Scotland, located in the Holyrood area of the capital, Edinburgh. The Parliament, informally referred to as "Holyrood", is a democratically elected body comprising 129 members known as Members of the Scottish Parliament...

 and the University of 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...

 to create a comprehensive on-line database of the proceedings of the Parliament of Scotland
Parliament of Scotland
The Parliament of Scotland, officially the Estates of Parliament, was the legislature of the Kingdom of Scotland. The unicameral parliament of Scotland is first found on record during the early 13th century, with the first meeting for which a primary source survives at...

 from 1235 to the Act of Union. The website was launched in 2008.

The project was formulated by Professor Keith Brown of Saint Andrews University in 1996. Funding was quickly approved by then-Secretary of State for Scotland
Secretary of State for Scotland
The Secretary of State for Scotland is the principal minister of Her Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom with responsibilities for Scotland. He heads the Scotland Office , a government department based in London and Edinburgh. The post was created soon after the Union of the Crowns, but was...

 Michael Forsyth
Michael Forsyth, Baron Forsyth of Drumlean
Michael Bruce Forsyth, Baron Forsyth of Drumlean PC, Kt is a British financier and politician, who was the Member of Parliament for Stirling from 1983 to 1997 and served in the cabinet of John Major as Secretary of State for Scotland from 1995 to 1997...

 and announced by then-Prime Minister
Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is the Head of Her Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom. The Prime Minister and Cabinet are collectively accountable for their policies and actions to the Sovereign, to Parliament, to their political party and...

 John Major
John Major
Sir John Major, is a British Conservative politician, who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Leader of the Conservative Party from 1990–1997...

 on 4 July 1996.
Quotations

Philosophy is not the owl of Minerva that takes flight after history has been realized in order to celebrate its happy ending; rather, philosophy is subjective proposition, desire, and praxis that are applied to the event.

Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire

"'Philosophy' is a word which has been used in many ways, some wider, some narrower. I propose to use it in a very wide sense, which I will now try to explain."

Bertrand Russell A History of Western Philosophy

Philosophy makes progress not by becoming more rigorous but by becoming more imaginative.

Richard Rorty, Introduction to Truth and Progress: Philosophical Papers, Volume 3 (1998).

To philosophise is to learn to die – philosophising is a soaring up to the Godhead – the knowledge of Being as Being.

Karl Jaspers, Philosophy and Science, World Review Magazine, March 1950.

Philosophy is questions that may never be answered. Religion is answers that may never be questioned.

Anonymous; quoted in

"Too much philosophy makes men mad." ~ Alan Judd, The Noonday Devil (1987)

"'You only think you are you barnpots,' shouted angry farmers from the meadows. 'Shut that row up! You're frightening the chickens, you lot and your bloody philosophy. You can't eat philosophy can you? Where would you be if us farmers went round spouting statements like that, eh? Dead, that's where you'd be! Because there'd be naff all to eat!"

Mike Harding 'Rambling on'

Physics and philosophy are at most a few thousand years old, but probably have lives of thousands of millions of years stretching away in front of them. They are only just beginning to get under way.

Physics and Philosophy, by James Jeans (1942), p.217.

 
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