ABSTRACT
Thomas Dick was born on 24 November 1774 in the Hilltown of Dundee and died at home in Broughty Ferry, near Dundee, on 29 July 1857. In his lifetime he saw Dundee's population quadruple and its shipping tonnage nearly septuple; he saw steam ships, locomotives, and other products of the industrial revolution supplement sailing ships and horse-drawn carriages. Also more immediate concern to him personally, he saw 'scientists' begin to supplant his fellow 'Christian philosophers' of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Indeed, Dick's life almost perfectly straddled the so-called second scientific revolution, usually dated from 1780 to 1850 and associated with the development of modern disciplinary boundaries in science. The phenomenal success of his first book, The Christian Philosopher, consummated Dick's creation of a new self. His choice of title indicated his debt to the past: this had been the honorific conferred upon Robert Boyle in a eulogy by the Rev. Gilbert Burnet.
