ADAMSON, PATRICK (1537-92), Scottish divine, Arch bishop of St. Andrews, was born at Perth and educated at St. Andrews. He then spent some years in Paris, and was in hiding for seven months after the massacre of St. Bartholomew. He re turned to Scotland in 1572, and in 1576 was appointed Archbishop of St. Andrews. He came into acute conflict with the General Assembly, and was twice excommunicated, though in each case the sentence was remitted. The last years of his life were spent in poverty. His collected works, which include Latin verse transla tions of the books of Job and Revelation, were printed in 1614. ADAMSON, ROBERT (1852-1902), Scottish philosopher, was born in Edinburgh on Jan. 19, 1852. After a distinguished career at Edinburgh university he spent some time at Heidelberg (1871), where he began his study of German philosophy. He then returned to Edinburgh as assistant, first to Henry Calderwood and later to A. Campbell Fraser; he joined the staff of the Encyclo pedia Britannica (9th ed.) (1874). In 1876 he succeeded W. S. Jevons in the chair of logic and philosophy at Owens college, Manchester. In 1893 he went to Aberdeen, and finally, in 1895, to the chair of logic at Glasgow, which he held till his death on Feb. 5, 1902. At Glasgow university he accomplished a great deal of useful administrative work and left a substantial impress on its constitution.
In 1903, under the title The Development of Modern Philos ophy and Other Essays, his more important lectures were published with a short biographical introduction by Prof. W. R. Sorley of Cambridge university (see Mind, xiii. p. 73 seq.) (1904). Most of the matter is taken verbatim from the notebook of one of his students. Under the same editorship there appeared, three years later, his Development of Greek Philosophy.
Throughout his lectures Adamson pursued the critical and historical method without formulating a constructive theory of his own. He felt that any philosophical advance must be based on the Kantian methods. As he grew older his metaphysical optimism waned. He felt that the increase of knowledge must come in the domains of physical science. Adamson represented an empiricism which,* so far from refuting, was actually based on, idealism, and yet was alert to expose the fallacies of a particular idealist con struction (see his essay in Ethical Democracy, edited by Dr. Stanton Coit).