A brilliant Scottish physicist who helped define modern science became a pioneer of conspiracy.

Ideas & Philosophy · Published 3 October 2026 Swipe more like this →

In short: John Robison was a titan of the Scottish Enlightenment, a professor who anticipated Coulomb's law and invented the siren. Yet, in his later years, he became obsessed with a dark theory: that the Illuminati and Freemasons were orchestrating a global plot to topple all governments and religions.

Born in 1739, John Robison was a central figure in the intellectual life of eighteenth-century Scotland. As a professor of natural philosophy at the University of Edinburgh and the first general secretary of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, he was deeply embedded in the era's scientific advancements. His work spanned mechanics, hydrostatics, and optics, and he contributed extensively to the third edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica. Notably, in 1769, he identified that like electrical charges repel with a force varying by the inverse-square of their distance, a discovery that predated Coulomb's law by sixteen years.

Despite his rigorous scientific background, the French Revolution triggered a profound shift in Robison's worldview. He became deeply disillusioned with the Enlightenment ideals he had once championed. In 1797, he published Proofs of a Conspiracy, a polemic arguing that the Order of the Illuminati had infiltrated Freemasonry to subvert European states. He relied heavily on material provided by a secret agent known as Alexander Horn, while the French priest Abbé Barruel independently developed a similar thesis. The book gained significant traction, even reaching George Washington, who acknowledged the spread of such radical principles while distancing American Masonic lodges from the alleged subversion.

Robison's legacy remains a complex duality. While his contributions to mechanical philosophy influenced nineteenth-century physics and his invention of the siren—later refined by Charles Cagniard de la Tour—left a lasting mark on acoustics, his political writings became a foundational text for modern conspiracy theory. His work was reprinted repeatedly over the centuries, reflecting a persistent fascination with the idea of hidden, malevolent actors behind historical events. By the time of his death in 1805, the man who had helped define the scientific method had also helped codify a narrative of secret, systemic intrigue that continues to resonate in political discourse today.

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