James Burnett, Lord Monboddo (baptised 25 October 1714 – 26 May 1799) was a Scottish judge, scholar of linguistic evolution, philosopher and deist.

As such, Burnett adopted an honorary title based on the name of his father's estate and family seat, Monboddo House.

Monboddo's early work in practising law found him in a landmark piece of litigation of his time, known as the Douglas "cause," or case.

[7] In the era after Monboddo was appointed to Justice of the high court, he organised "learned suppers" at his house on 13 St John Street,[8] off the Canongate in Edinburgh's Old Town, where he discussed and lectured about his theories.

Monboddo studied languages of peoples colonised by Europeans, including those of the Carib, Eskimo, Huron, Algonquian, Peruvian (Quechua?)

According to Burnett, this disparity partially arises from the greater vocabulary of Northern European languages and the decreased need for polysyllabic content.

He argued that Greek is the most perfect language ever established because of its complex structure and tonality, rendering it capable of expressing a wide gamut of nuances.

Monboddo was the first to formulate what is now known as the single-origin hypothesis, the theory that all human origin was from a single region of the earth; he reached this conclusion by reasoning from linguistic evolution (Jones, 1789).

Bailey's The Holly and the Horn[4] states that "Charles Darwin was to some degree influenced by the theories of Monboddo, who deserves the title of Evolutionist more than that of Eccentric."

This concept was quite striking for his era, because it departed from the classical religious thinking that man was created instantaneously and language revealed by God.

In fact, Monboddo was deeply religious and pointed out that the creation events were probably simply allegories and did not dispute that the universe was created by God.

This suggests that Monboddo understood the role of natural processes in evolution; artificial selection was the starting-point for many of the proto-evolutionary thinkers, and for Darwin himself.

He believed that contemporary people suffered many diseases because they were removed from the environmental state of being unclothed and exposed to extreme swings in climate.

Burnett wrote of numerous cultures (mostly based upon accounts of explorers); for example, he described "insensibles" and "wood eaters" in Of the Origin and Progress of Language.

In Antient Metaphysics, Burnett claimed that man is gradually elevating himself from the animal condition to a state in which mind acts independently of the body.

Much effort was devoted to crediting Isaac Newton with brilliant discoveries in the Laws of Motion, while defending the power of the mind as outlined by Aristotle.

Monboddo was a pioneer in regard to many modern ideas and had already in the eighteenth century realized the value of "air-baths"[20] (the familiar term which he invented) to mental and physical health.

Monboddo "awaked every morning at four, and then for his health got up and walked in his room naked, with the window open, which he called taking an air bath."

Another time after a decision went against him regarding the value of a horse, he refused to sit with the other judges and assumed a seat below the bench with the court clerks.

Burnett in his earlier years suggested that the orangutan was a form of man, although some analysts think that some of his presentation was designed to entice his critics into debate.

Burnett may simply have taken the view that it was reasonable for people to assume the things they do and the word of a naval officer trained to give accurate reports was a credible source.

He appeared to argue that animal species adapted and changed to survive, and his observations on the progression of primates to man amounted to some kind of concept of evolution.

In Thomas Love Peacock's 1817 novel Melincourt, an orangutan punningly named "Sir Oran Haut-Ton" becomes a candidate for British Parliament based on Monboddo's theories.