For those of us made with Dewey decimal brains and card catalogue hands books are shelved from left to right top to bottom end of story full stop but books have ever been in different shapes and sizes so what to do if you're a librarian with limited space who would prefer that nobody touch a book or misshelve or mislay or fail to return part of the collection you can put them in special collections with limited hours and restricted access and hand out cotton gloves and forbid pen and ink and the cracking of spines which you can justify for manuscripts and books of a certain age but for the rest there are the stacks usually open access and always jam packed for such spaces books have been shelved in a variety of ways all on shelves of the same height with larger books slid in spines up shelf marks face up to the front but in earlier times books were shelved by size largest and tallest on the bottom shortest and smallest on the top b...

When Nick Phillipson died earlier this year he left unfinished a book on the early modern (16th to 18th century) "Science of Man" project.  Phillipson, an Emeritus Professor of History from the University of Edinburgh, enjoyed well deserved success for eminently readable page turner intellectual biographies of David Hume and Adam Smith.  He lived and breathed Scottish Enlightenment philosophy, and generously shared his enthusiasm with colleagues, visiting scholars, research students (postgraduates), and undergraduates alike for 50 years.  When Adam Smith died, he left on the anvil, and gave orders to be burned, his own great attempt at a Science of Man.  I attempt to provide some hints of what Phillipson's unfinished project may have contained.  I have not personally seen his drafts or notes, but did speak with him about the matter on the telephone before he died. Edinburgh 30 years ago I first came into contact with Dr. Phillipson in the Winter of 1989/90...