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Patrick Geddes & Colleagues

British, founded 1892

BiographyGeddes, Patrick (Scottish biologist and town planner, 1854-1932)

Biography:

"....Geddes ordered his ideas into a theory of ‘civics’ which was related to current theories of citizenship but had a more immediate purpose of training young people to understand their environment so that they could cherish it for the benefit of future generations. Civics was applied sociology—the way in which enlightened individuals could work for their local city. As part of his educational work in Edinburgh he purchased the old camera obscura building near the castle in 1892 and set it up as a museum, called the Outlook Tower. The work he did there, inventing ways of looking at the city based on geographical, historical, and sociological perspectives, was a major part of his contribution to the evolution of social sciences in Britain. A number of Edinburgh students were to continue this work, including Victor Branford, who became a businessman but used his money both to support Outlook Tower activities and to set up the British Sociological Society (in 1903); A. J. Herbertson, who was recruited by H. J. Mackinder when he set up the first institute of geography at a British university in Oxford in 1899; and T. R. Marr, who went to Manchester, after a period of running the Outlook Tower, to work as the warden of the university settlement there. There were many others. Geddes' mode of operation was to inspire others while he himself continued his never-ending study of evolution within civic society. He even invented his own graphical method for charting his ideas which he called his ‘Thinking Machines’. Yet his personal museum, the Outlook Tower, for all the vitality he poured into it and the inspiration it gave to many who visited it, was a failure. Its expenses always outran its income and Geddes' volunteer helpers found it hard to keep up with his next idea...."

Helen Meller, ‘Geddes, Sir Patrick (1854–1932)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Jan 2008 [http://proxy.bostonathenaeum.org:2055/view/article/33361, accessed 4 Nov 2015]

(William Sharp) "....Together with Patrick Geddes he headed the Evergreen circle which was, among other things, concerned with developing a distinctive and renewed Scottish Celticism in the context of recapturing Edinburgh's status as a metropolis of European stature. Two Fiona MacLeod novels, The Mountain Lovers and The Sin Eater, appeared in 1895, the latter being published by Patrick Geddes and Colleagues, a firm established to publish literature in support of the Celtic revival; Sharp was its literary adviser...."

Murray G. H. Pittock, ‘Sharp, William [Fiona MacLeod] (1855–1905)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [http://proxy.bostonathenaeum.org:2055/view/article/36041, accessed 4 Nov 2015]

Person TypeInstitution

Last Updated8/7/24

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