He was natural within Edinburgh. His father was the solicitor, and his mother was a girl of Matthew Buist, factor to Lord Haddington. Inside 1855 Mrs. Adamson was left the widow with small means, & devoted herself totally to the education of her sixer babies. One, Robert was successful from either a number 1. At a prevent of his school career he entered a University of Edinburgh at the age of xiv, & 4 years late graduated using number one-class honors inside mental philosophy, using prizes inside each department of the faculty of Arts. He completed his university successes by winning a Tyndall-Bruce scholarship, a Hamilton fellowship (1872), the Ferguson scholarship (1872) and a Shaw fellowship (1873).

Fallowing the short home at Heidelberg (1871), where he began his learn of German philosophy, he returned to Edinburgh as supporter number one to Henry Calderwood and later to A. Campbell Fraser; he joined the staff of the Encyclopædia Britannica (9th edition) (1874) and studied widely in the Advocates' Library.

Within 1876 he came to England when successor to W. S. Jevons in the chair of logic and philosophy, at Owens College, Manchester. Within 1883 he received the honorary degree of LL.D. In 1893 he went to Aberdeen University, and finally in 1895 to the chair of logic at Glasgow University, which he held till his death.

His married woman, Margaret Duncan, the girl of the Manchester merchandiser, was a woman of kindred tastes, & their union was totally happy.

These are matter for rue to the student that Adamson's active labors in the lecture room precluded him from either orderly production. His writings consisted of short articles, of which numerous appeared around the Cyclopaedia & in Mind, the volume in Kant and another in Fichte. At the instance of his dying he was writing a History of Psychological science, & got promised a functiin on Kant & the Modern Naturalists. Each around his life & around his writings he was remarkable for nonpartisanship. It was his peculiar virtue that he can quote his opponents while forgoing warping their meaning. From either this point of review he would own been possibly a foremost historiographer of philosophy of his instance, experienced his agency labors been less fastidious.

Except in a period of the number one couple years at Manchester, he delivered his lectures forgoing manuscripts. Within 1903, under a title A Development of Modern Philosophy & More Essays, his additional crucial lectures were published sustaining the short biographic introduction by W. R. Sorley of Cambridge University (see Mind, xiii. 1904, p. 73 foil.). Virtually all of a matter is taken word for word from either the note-book of one of his students. Under a equivalent editorship there appeared, troika years late, his Development of Greek Philosophy.

Additionally to his agent operate, he did great deal administrative operate for Victoria University and the university of Glasgow. In a organization of Victorithe University he took a first a share, &, when chairman of the Board of Studies at Owens College, he presided all over the general academical board of the Victoria University. At Glasgow he was presently elective one of a representatives on a court, & to him poronotus triacanthus around big measure a extension of the academical session & the improved devices of the university.

Throughout his lectures, Adamson pursued the critical & historical method while forgoing formulating a constructive theory of his have. He felt that any philosophic advance must become according to a Kantian methods. It was his habit to produce straight for the ultimate issue, disregarding half-truths & declining compromise. He left a hypothesis to exist as worked out by others; this done, he would criticize sustaining all a rigour of logic, & by having the profound distrust of imagination, metaphor & the attitude called the might-to-suppose.

When he grew older his metaphysical optimism waned. He felt that a increase of cognition must are in the domains of physical science. However this empirical tendency when regards science never modified his metaphysical outlook. He has been known as Kantian & Neo-Kantian, Realist and Idealist (by himself, for he held that appearance & reality come co-conterminous and coincident).

At a equivalent instance, inside his criticism of more views he was well-nigh average of Hegelian idealism. A lot processes of logical thinking or even judgment (we.e. tons units of thought) come (i personally personally) analysable single by abstraction, & (Ii) come compound of deduction & induction, i.e. rational & empirical. An illustration of his empirical tendency is discovered within his attitude to a Absolute & the Self. A " Absolute " philosophical system he repute the mere disguise of failure, a dishonorable attempt to clothe ignorance in the ostentatious attire of mystery. A Self as a primary, determinant suspire, he would does'nt so admit. He represented an empiricism which, so far from either refuting, was actually according to, idealism, & eventually was alert to expose the false belief of a particular dreamer construction (understand his essay within Ethical Democracy, edited by Stanton Coit).