The Enlightenment and Political Experimentation

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Learn more at posterhouse. org slash studios Hi, I'm I R Playo and you're listening to Science Friday We're celebrating the nation's two hundred fiftieth, and we're better to have that conversation than in Boston place of the American Revolution You may not realize how connected science is to the birth of our country The founders of our country found the role of science to be so important to our democracy that the founders specifically called for the support and promotion of science all the way up at the top of our Cstitution, Article one So now if I say Colonial America and science Probably the first thing that comes up is Gay. You all getays Ben Franklin, yes Ben was one of America's greatest scientists even to this day, but Ben wasn't the only one thinking big thoughts asking big questions There were plenty of natural philosophers looking at the world in new ways and trying to make sense of how the world works I'm here in WBUR Citypace and joining me is dor. Robert Allison, prorofessor of history at Suffolk University, is also chair of Revolution to fifty. and president of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts. Thanks for being here with us. Thanks, Ir. It's great to be here I Okay, let's begin with Franklin. Why not? What made him such a great scientist because he was Actually the great thing about Franklin for scientists is he wrote things down He recorded a protocol Franklin came to Boston. he left he grew up in Boston Philadelphia is going to say the revolution began there. We know it began here We like to say the revolution happened in Massachusetts. They went to Philadelphia to fill out the paperwork Franklin grew up in Boston, ran away from home when he was sixteen, went to Philadelphia, and brought to Philadelphia a lot of the things he had learned in Boston he develops in Philadelphia. But he comes back to Boston in the seventeen forties, sees Dr. Spence demonstrating this electrical apparatus, which can talk about later. And he is fascinated with this, the electrical fluid. He buys the apparatus from Spence, G goes to Philadelphia. He and a group of guys get together to experiment with the electrical fluid. And Franklin invented a lot of the words we still use for things involving the electrical fluid. like what do you call guys who work with electricity That's what these guys were Franklin is experimenting with these things along with a group of other guys who are doing things. and He writes down the protocols for everything they're doing so they can be replicated. So he takes electricity, which had been a parlor trick and turns it into a science And all of this can be verified, right? This is mythology doesn't. And you said he had a paper trail. He did leave an extensive paper trail. His experiments are being published in Europe, not here, but in Europe where they're called the Philadelphia experxperiments. because this guy in Philadelphia, which to Europe was the edge of the universe, was coming up with these things that then people in Europe are replicating seeing how they work. So Franklin gets honorary degrees in Europe when his elect his the famous experiment with electricity and the clouds is published Emmanuel Kant calls Franklin the Prometheus of the modern age It's really hard to overstate how important Franklin was and actually much better known as a natural philosopher in Europe than he was in the American colonies. And that was that famous kite flying That's right. Yes.. And you say the whole story of the kite, he wasn't the first to do that. It was already done in France So the Franklin had written this protocol In one of his books that's published in Europe says, if you put a sentry box on top of a church stele And you ran an iron pipe up from that. And you have a guy in the century boix with a Lyden jar. And Franklin also coined the term Laden jar for something that a Dr. Mushenbrook had invented in the city of Leidden He then can collect the electrical fluid if in fact, the clouds contain electricity problem Franklin had in doing this experiment in Philadelphia, there were no church steples You grew up in Boston where details. Plenty of church steeples. The pastor of Christs Church in Philadelphia, they're building a new church probably was pleased when Benjamin Franklin came to make a donation and probably was puzzled why Franklin said the steeples should be at least one hundred fifty feet tall So he doesn't do it, but in France, there are church steeples. In Germany, there are church steeples. in England, there are they're doing this in the summer after Franklin publishes this and Franklin doesn't know this that all over Europe they're proving him right that the clouds do contain the electrical fluid. So he wants to he doesn't know they've done it. So he wants to see. And this is why he thinks, maybe if I fly a kite, So he and his son, his son William, who is in his twenties. I know the representation we see, in fact, on the Franklin statue in downtown Boston, it's young young boy, William, but it's actually a twenty three year old guy and his middle aged father who were out there trying to fly a kite. I'm shocked, shocked, so to speak. I'm sorry, Iad get and And Frank, they're flying the kite. think about it. If you're going to fly a kite when you're a man of a certain age and it looks like there's going to be a thunderstorm, you're probably not going to tell all of your neighbors, Hey, I'm going to try to fly a kite. They're going to think you really are loony So He doesn't tell anyone this. they go out to fly the kite And nothing happens then they see the bristles on the kite string start to stick out straight And then they see a spark that he has a key tied with a silk thread to the kite string And the key starts to glow. and then he holds up the knuckle to it and gets a small shot and then holds up his Laden jar, as he says, collected the electrical fluid copiously. So he has proven this to himself. It's already been proven to the scientific world in Europe So he becomes a celebrity. He does in Europe, right? Oh yeah. And Isaac Asimov wrote a book years ago called The Kite that Won the Revolution because it allowed the French now he was a celebrity in France and when America was looking for aid. Right. He goes to France. because they know him in France. they know his reputation. In fact, even before he goes to France He goes to Montreal The Americans are trying to bring Canada into the cause. So they send a couple of guys named Carol from Maryland and in their advantages, they're Catholic. And New England has been fighting against New France for about eighty years They think, okay, we'll send a Catholic priest and his brother who are members of Congress, along with Franklin because everyone loves Franklin. So they go on a mission to Montreal. doesn't work then at the end of seventeen seventy six, when things are going badly for the Americans in the war, they've been kicked out of New York. War itself seems to be a disaster. Franklin goes off to Europe to France with his two grandsons. And the rest is history, rest is history. Now that we have deified Franklin and uses Let's talk about some of the big questions of the times. What were scientists or Were they called scientists back then? No, they were called natural philosophers. In fact The first real America well We can have an argument of who was the first. This is probably a group that hass lots of candidates for the first I will say the first professor at Harvard to teach what we call science was a fellow named John Winthrop. who is the Hollis professor of mathematics and natural philosophy. and Winthrop was one of the real thinkers about this. He was a brilliant math teacher. By the way, he was given tenure at Harvard. He was given a named professorship at Harvard when he was twenty five years oldow. Just like today. Just like today. like And he did have he had a heavier teaching load than professor As today. And what were Americans doing? there's a famous historian named Silvo Berdini Bendini and he called early Americans A country of tinkkeerers and experimenters. Is that what was going on in the state? That is pretty much what was going on. after Winthrop and Franklin, probably the next guy is David Rittenhouse and writtenhouse makes a clock. That is he's a guy who knows how to do that to work with his hands. And the other guys in Franklin's circle in Philadelphia and remember Franklin was a guy who he was a printer So he knew how to set type and he was always proud of the fact that he could do this very fast. The other guys in his circle are guys who are Artisans or they would call them or manufacturers. They build things. So a guy who knows how to make glass jars and a big facet of making electricity is m of a glass tubes. So there's someone who is a glass maker There's another guy, a watchmaker. O people who work with their hands are skilled at this are doing this. You're not going to merchants or the ministry, there are a couple of ministers involved in this. The more learned professions aren't the tinkkerers, but they do, like Professor Winthrop, have certain ideas about things and Winthrop is I have to say, having read his lectures, which he published at the time, he would have been a very good communicator because even I can understand what he is saying about how things work Yeah, go ahead. No going on. I was going to ask about you talked natural philosophers.. Does that mean that these amateurs? We're basically going into the woods and looking at nature and talking about it They're thinking about why things are working in a certain way. And by the way, this is what you would called anyone who is a natural philosopher, Sir Isaac Newton. Or Voltaire is someone we probably don't think of as a natural philosopher. But it is thanks to Voltaire We know how gravity works. What's the famous story about Isaac Newton? How does he discover great Voltaire wants to meet Newton. He's in London. But Newton has died. He goes to Newton's estate. Newton's niece shows Voltaire around. this is in I think, seventeen twenty seven or so And the niece says, Oh, this they're at the apple orchard. My uncle was sitting under that tree. He saw an apple fall Then he saw the moon rise. and that's how he put together gravity being this force. You know I've looked at the mooonrise now for almost seventy years. I've seen apples fall. I could never put that together Newton has a mind that could Voltaire has a sense, this is the way you explain this to those of us who could not understand those of us who have not read Principia Mathematica who here has And in fact, Voltaire's lady friend, the Marquise de Chateleat does the first translation of the Principia into any other language. So these are natural philosophers. You don't need a college degree to do this. You know, I mentioned before about how the founding fathers decided to put science in the Constitution and way up there at the top. And one of those people was Thomas Jefferson. Y. Right? And if you go to Monticecello and look at Jefferson's house You can see all the stuff. He's like he was really prolific as a tinkerr was He. He definitely loved to tinker with things. Yes. he was always inventing and he didn't patent things as know, these should be free use. Anyone who wants to use this. So the clock, other things, some of them when he makes up what he called a polygraph So he could make copies of his letters So he has a pen here and is attached to a rod here and then there's another pen so he could make copies while he was writing. Bea one reason, by the way, we know so much about what Jefferson thought and John Adams thought is they saved everything and they made copies of everything. They would have loved Xerox machines. Yeah So Jefferson has this polygraph so he can make copies as he is writing and really fascinated in how things work mechanics of. We need to take a quick break and we'll be back with more on history, science, and early America. Stay with us WNYC Studios is supported by the New York Community Trust, providing a powerful way to make a difference on the causes and communities you care about Here's an audio portrait of Nancy Talbot who has a donor advised fund with her husband Jay and is part of a women's giving circle at the Tust I'm a native New Yorker who spent most of my adult life in Chicago. and when we moved back here twenty years ago We looked for a way to reconnect with the city. Community Trust was our first stop and they introduced us to a Dor Circle, which has enabled me to meet extraordinary heroes in five boroughs who have marvelous ideas but few resources to to make it happen. and we've had the privilege over the years of supporting them in their dreams. Contact the New York commommunity Trust at give two. nYc to find out more. That's giveto. nYc We think of science as Coming up with a question or an idea, and then going out to collect data. Yes, right. Did these scientists, these early natural philosophers also collect data? Oh, they did definitely. I mean, Franklin does, when he's doing these different experiments and the other people in his circle are experimenting, they're saying what works, what doesn't? And it has to be able to be replicated Winthrop, there's an earthquake in seventeen fifty five in the late fall here. It's about a month or so before there's a massive earthquake in Lisbon And he is looking at How far the bricks from the buildings at Harvard And he deduces from this the higher bricks fell further So this means the buildings would have been swaying like this, which is what throws them further. Therefore, the earthquake is an undulation or a wave. And then he has a theory about what's underneath the earth. By way, there's a rival theory. A minister in Boston, the Reverend Prince, who's at the O South Meeting house, says, the problem is we've put up all these electrical rods this is another Franklin's innovation. We can stop lightning from burning down houses by putting up lightning rods. The Reverend Prince says, those are retracting the electrical fluid. This is what caused the earthquake. We have too many electrical rods And so Professor Winthrop has to counter that particular theory in his b, which he does very gently, but it's an argument about what is making this happen? We don't hear very much about Winthrop We don't. But didn't he conduct a scientific expedition Observe the transit of Venus, right? Yeah the big big news for us in the seventeen sixties was Venus is going to transit across the suun And by the way, this don't The next time this is going to happen for those of you who think, boy, that might it happened in I think, two thousand five, twenty eleven The next time is going to be in twenty one seventeen. I'm writing that down. yeah And after that it'll be twenty one, twenty five, and then it's going to be in the twenty two hundreds, the next one. So this is a big this is something that brings together all of the countries of the world to try to chart this. In fact, In the seventeen forties, Franklin publishes something in French about the transit of Mercury can be observed sends it up to Canada. This is at a time when the British and the French are at war So he's telling the enemy, look out for this. And then in seventeen sixty one, different countries launch expeditions and here in Massachusetts The um Gnor Governor Francis Bernard and the Massachusettscial provrovincial Assembly authorize money for an expedition loaning there's a ship that belonged to the province, the Massachusetts to take Professor Winthrop up to Newfoundland where it'll be more visible. And Harvard allows him to take along the various telescopes. He has a twenty four foot long telescope he takes up. He brought that himself. He brought that himself. I hope it collapsed into something smaller. He and two guys they set this up off of Newfound lland. They realize the town itself is kind of surrounded by mountains. so they go off to one, which they call Venus Hill and set this up So they can focus on the sun and they have you're probably wondering, okay, youre going to look through a telescope at the sun? No, they have a glass plate that is then under it. So on the glass plate, you will see the sun and you will see Venus transiting across it, you then can measure how fast it goes as well as the parallax. Now I'm a historian, not a scientist. One good thing about Professor Winthrop is didnn't consider himself a scientist either so he spoke in words that people like me could understand. You can then gauge the size of the suun, but the other thing you can get if you have people doing measurements from different places, how far the suun is from the Eth, and that will give us a sense of the scale of the solar system as well as the size of the different planets So this is a very exciting thing. He does this in seventeen sixty one, seventeen sixty nine, the plan is he's going to go out to the western end of Lake Superior by this time his health isn't are good enough to do that. David Rittenhouse in seventeen sixty nine, by the way, does have a telescope put in the cupola of what is today called Independence Hall. And he is going to lie down under it so he can track this. He is so overwhelmed by the thought that he is going to see Venus transiting across the sun And no one will see this again for about one hundred and fifty years. he faints. He does recover. But if you've been to Providence, Rhode Island, there is a transit street because that is where they observe the transit of Venus. Oh. There's a Venus point in Tahiti because the British send in Cup to go to Tahiti to get a sense of this. The French are also sending expeditions. so this is The transit of Venus and then that does allow us to know how far the Earth is from the sun. I should say. Professor Winthrop. On his seventeen sixty one, he estimates it's about what seventy three million miles. Cose. It is closed. Yeah. So you have guys who are thinking about earthquakes. some people are thinking about Venus. Anything else come to mind of the kinds of things that natural philosophers thinking about in those days They're really thinking about how does the world work? What holds the world together The gravity is for you And this is replacing the Descarten idea about vortices that hold things up But it's really how does the world work? How do we rationalize things? This is why we call the period the enlightenment partly because of but also because of Newton's book Opt where he's writing about the nature of light. You reminded me of something, and that was another New England thinker Cotton mather Yes. smallmallpox. smallallpuckx. tellell us about that So Cotton Mather, as you know, was a minister in Boston. His father was a minister in Boston. And Mather was also a fellow of the Royal Society. This is the leading scientific organization in the English speaking world French have the Royal Academy science. And Mather in six, seventeen, fourteen We know he read the proceedings of the Royal Society that year because that was the year he was inducted. It was because he wrote an essay published in the proceedings about some of the natural curiosities in America This is something that fascinated Europe. What is different about America? So Mather read this. There's also an account in it of something that had happened in Ismir, a city in Turkey, where there was a smallpox outbreak people were inoculated, taking some of the pus from someone who has a mild case of small pox and then you a little bit of your skin in your chest, put some of that in it, mix it with a blood, cover it with a walnut shell. Ke it warm And what will happen is after a few days, you will get a few very minor pock marks there which will then will dry up and fall off And youll won't get smallpox then or ever Mather says, if this ever happens in Boston, he sends a letter to the Royal Society, I will make sure we do this So had not a small there had been a smallpox outbreak in Boston roughly every thirteen years since sixteen thirty. And it's a devastating disease And in seventeen twenty one, a ship from the West Indies arrives And there were reports that some members of the crew were ill They get off the ship They're renting rooms in the North E. and then after about a week they heard these guys have small pox. And by this time, everyone who is on the ship, everyone they have encountered Many of the people encountered by those people will get the small poox. So a panic starts in Boston Mather comes to the selectment and says I know what to do because I've read about this. Also Mather has a slave named Onesimus from West Africa. and Oesimus had confirmed what Franklin read in the reports of the Royal Society. In West Africa, someone gets the small pox. He says, you cut, cut his skin, take some of the pox, mix it up and nobody gets smallpox. So Mather on the testimony of the Royal Society as well as Onesius goes to the selectman and says, We should start inoculating And they say, that is the craziest idea we have ever heard What they selectmen do, they say no, no no to this They say what we'll do is we'll hire some free people of colors to sweep the street. So people will see we're actually doing something And then because Mather is a prolific writer. He's the most prolific writer in the history of Boston. He published over three hundred books He writes about the smallpox. What should be done about it Now this gives rise to a new newewspaper in town James Franklin starts a newspaper The New England Current purpose of countering ridiculous idea of self procurement of smallpox By the way, Franklin's younger brother, Benjamin is his apprentice And the New England current says, what do these things have in common persecution of the Quakers in sixteen sixty, the execution of the witches in sixteen ninety three, the self procurement of smallpox in seventeen twenty one common denominator is Cotton Mather was involved in all of these things. And now he wants us to inject ourselves with a disease that's going to kill us. So this doesn't make sense to Bostonians Someone actually throws a bomb through Mers's window It doesn't go off. So we can read the note, which says Mather you dog Inoculate yourself with this sign you What a story. It is quite a story. You know, I think about You think about great scientists, you think about Newton and people's scientists Galileo, their closest to religion and the church. How did the church influence what was going on with natural philosophers in America. That's a very good question because there wasn't that big of a divide between them. because people like Cotton Mather, he is a fellow of the Royal Society, he is trying to understand God's creation And so is John Winthrop. But you have this idea as we're trying to understand the workings of God's world And was so there was harmony there. There There was not conflict like with these other And Newton the same way. And they're definitely thinking about this in the context of a creator. And the idea of gravity, there's this idea that there's different gravitational pulls in different places. Well, no, there's one gravitational pull They do, by the way, had gotten away from the idea that the Sun revolved around the Eth So you see in the almanacs in the seventeenth century and eighteenth century just an assumption. This isn't an assumption everywhere in the world that the Sun is the center of the solar system as opposed to the Earth. Right So speaking of center, at this time, Europe is still the center of science. Yes. And they're looking at all these young upstarts in the colonies. do the Europeans view them as real scientists or what was their attitude toward them They viewed someone like Franklin as a real scientist because of his contributions. But when he starts venturing into the world of politics, opinions about him change in England Not so much in France, which is one reason he goes to France where he meets Voltaire and meets with others So yes, there is a change. It's hard to believe that people might their perspectives on how the world works might be tinged by their political leanings. I can't believe them.. It's shocking. I hope I never lived to see that. y Were there different schools of thought in natural philosophy? You know when you get two scientists, you get three arguments about it. That's true. There were. In fact, Franklin, he's in Paris, and he reads an account of a British natural philosopher who is arguing that Franklin is all wrong, that the lightning rods should have a round point. They should This guy says, no, they should have a straight point And Franklin thinks well, this is a scientific argument. Maybe I should write in defense of the round point But then he thinks, well, why because If the other one works better, why am I trying to defend something that doesn't work? Let people experiment There are many different ideas about this. I mentioned Descartes thinking that vortices hold things up. The Newtonians believe though that gravity is this unifying thing that pulls things together And there the French officially are very much committed to the Des Ccartes idea and the reason Franklin's Experiment is carried out in Paris is there's a French natural philosopher who wants to prove that Ecardian's wrong including the guy who is the royal experimenter for the King. So there is not only let's prove this wrong, but there's a certain petty jealousy among these characters. Speaking spepeaking of which, as we running out of time here, is there a way for you to sort of sum up the mood of the time and show how Science or natural philosophy fit into that mood. Thomas Payne, and by the way, Thomas Payne also has a patent. He's developed a suspension bridge or a piling bridge, but that's a story for another day. that we have it in our power to begin the world over again And we are trying to start something, and the Constitution, which Ira mentioned, is also an experiment. You know, David Yumer wrote an essay that politics may be reduced to a science thinking, okay, we understand how this natural world is working. What about the world of politics? And the American Constitutions and the American independence is really an experiment. What happens when we leave the human mind free and untrameled by the coercive power of the state or by old ideas. So you definitely have in this period an idea that we are creating the world over again and Payne says No one has had this opportunity since the days of Adam and Eve. And John Adams asks When before have three million people had the ability to make an election of government any more than they can make an election of climate or soil So they understand that this is a remarkable moment they are in and they're able to take advantage of it because they are beginning to think aew So I mean, to sum up where we started with the Constitution