Henry Home, Lord Kames

Henry Home, Lord Kames (1696–27 December 1782) was a Scottish writer, philosopher and judge who played a major role in Scotland's Agricultural Revolution.

A fourth stage evolved with the development of market towns and seaports, "commercial society", bringing yet more laws and complexity but also providing more benefit.

[11] Lord Kames could see these stages within Scotland itself, with the pastoral Highlands, the agricultural Lowlands, the "polite" commercial towns of Glasgow and Edinburgh, and in the Western Isles a remaining culture of rude huts where fishermen and gatherers of seaweed eked out their subsistence living.

In his book Sketches of the History of Man, in 1774, Home claimed that the environment, climate, or state of society could not account for racial differences, so that the races must have come from distinct, separate stocks.

In the popular book Elements of Criticism (1762) Home interrogated the notion of fixed or arbitrary rules of literary composition, and endeavoured to establish a new theory based on the principles of human nature.

"[14] Neil Rhodes has argued that Lord Kames played a significant role in the development of English as an academic discipline in the Scottish Universities.