Economists in the French Enlightenment (like Jacques Turgot) and the Scottish Enlightenment (like Adam Smith) recognized that essential human institutions such as language, culture, legal customs, mutual aid societies and markets develop spontaneously when governments get out of the way.

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Two floors go on to depict the intellectual flowering of the Scottish enlightenment (epitomised by David Hume and Adam Smith), and the economic explosion fuelled by British imperial expansion that took place after the union with England, with exhibits ranging from Paisley-pattern textiles to silverware and steam engines.

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The exhibit then moves to Scotland, where its co-organizer, the National Galleries of Scotland, has provided a series of iconic 18th-century Scottish golf portraits, among them a full-length view of the youthful, tartan-clad Sir James and Sir Alexander MacDonald (from around 1749) by William Mosman and a portrait of William Inglis, Captain of the Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers (circa 1790), by Sir Henry Raeburn, the most prominent portraitist of the Scottish Enlightenment.

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Not surprisingly, he is particularly fond of the 18th-century Scottish enlightenment.

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