Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-rdxmf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-24T21:54:32.303Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

‘To mend the scheme of Providence’: Benjamin Franklin's electrical heterodoxy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 February 2012

C.R.C. BAXFIELD
C.R.C. BAXFIELD*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, UK. Email: [email protected].
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

I suggest in this article that Benjamin Franklin's electrical experiments were naturalistic and reactive towards providential theories of natural harmony and electricity provided by the English experimentalists Stephen Hales, William Watson and Benjamin Wilson. Conceptualizing nature as a divine balance, Franklin rejected English arguments for God's conservation of nature's harmony, suggesting instead that nature had within itself the ability to re-equilibrate when rendered unbalanced. Whilst Franklin's work reveals an experimentally defined fissure between providential and naturalistic views of matter and motion in the mid-eighteenth century, his subsequent reflections on the use of natural philosophy sheds light on the divergent trajectory of utility implicit in these differing views. Hales and Watson in particular believed that insight into nature's providential manifestations gave the natural philosopher a medically restorative role, aligning the power of nature with God's benevolent purpose to heal the infirm. For Franklin, humanity behaved like nature, moving only when necessary. Natural philosophy existed to help these needs, making new worlds that had no dependence on God.

Type
Research Article
Information
The British Journal for the History of Science , Volume 46 , Issue 2 , June 2013 , pp. 179 - 197
Copyright
Copyright © British Society for the History of Science 2012 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Franklin to C. Colden, 12 April 1753, in L.W. Labaree (ed.), The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, New Haven: Yale University Press, 40 vols., 1959–2011, vol. 4, 1961, pp. 463–464.

2 Franklin to Colden, 23 April 1752, in Franklin, Benjamin, Experiments and Observations on Electricity, 5th edn, London: Printed for F. Newbery, 1774, pp. 274, 275Google Scholar.

3 Weinberger, Jerry, Benjamin Franklin Unmasked: On the Unity of His Moral, Religious, and Political Thought, Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2005Google Scholar, pp. 254, 255, 288.

4 On the international basis of Franklin's science see Chaplin, Joyce, The First Scientific American: Benjamin Franklin and the Pursuit of Genius, New York: Basic Books, 2006Google Scholar; Delbourgo, James, A Most Amazing Scene of Wonders, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005Google Scholar; and Wrightson, Nick, ‘ “[Those with] great abilities have not always the best information”: how Franklin's trans-Atlantic book-trade and scientific networks interacted, ca. 1730–1757’, Early American Studies (2010) 8, pp. 94–119Google Scholar. On Franklin's rejection of Christian revelation see Aldridge, A.O., Benjamin Franklin and Nature's God, Durham: Duke University Press, 1967Google Scholar; and Kerry Walters, ‘Franklin and the question of religion’, in Carla Mulford (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Benjamin Franklin, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008, pp. 91–103.

5 Delbourgo, op. cit. (4), pp. 16, 42, 45–46.

6 See Cohen, I. Bernard, Franklin and Newton: An Inquiry into Speculative Newtonian Experimental Science and Franklin's Work in Electricity as an Example Thereof, Philadelphia: The American Philosophical Society, 1956Google Scholar; Heilbron, John, ‘Franklin, Haller, and Franklinist history’, Isis (1977) 68, pp. 539–549Google Scholar; idem, Electricity in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries: A Study of Early Modern Physics, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979Google Scholar; and Cohen, I. Bernard, Benjamin Franklin's Science, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990Google Scholar.

7 See Heilbron, John, Elements of Early Modern Physics, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982Google Scholar, pp. 190, 193, 240.

8 Heilbron, Electricity in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, op. cit. (6), p. 2. See idem, ‘Plus and minus: Franklin's zero-sum way of thinking’, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society (2006) 150, pp. 607–617Google Scholar.

9 See Paola Bertucci, ‘The electrical body of knowledge: medical electricity and experimental knowledge in the mid-eighteenth century’, in Paola Bertucci and Guiliano Pancali (eds.), Electric Bodies: Episodes in the History of Medical Electricity, Bologna: Università di Bolgna, 2001, pp. 43–68; idem, ‘Revealing sparks: John Wesley and the religious utility of electrical healing’, BJHS (2006) 39, pp. 341–362CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Fara, Patricia, An Entertainment for Angels: Electricity in the Enlightenment, Cambridge: Icon Books, 2002Google Scholar; and Bensaude-Vincent, Bernadette and Blondel, Christine, Science and Spectacle in the European Enlightenment, Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008Google Scholar.

10 Simon Schaffer, ‘A social history of plausibility: country, city and calculation in Augustan Britain’, in Adrian Wilson (ed.), Rethinking Social History: English Society 1570–1920, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1993, p. 141; Feingold, Mordechai, The Newtonian Moment: Isaac Newton and the Making of Modern Culture, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004Google Scholar.

11 Schaffer, Simon, ‘Natural philosophy and public spectacle in the eighteenth century’, History of Science (1983) 21, pp. 1–43Google Scholar, 4.

12 Joyce Chaplin, ‘Benjamin Franklin's natural philosophy’, in Mulford, op. cit. (4), pp. 63–76, 65.

13 See Newton, Isaac, Opticks, 2nd edn, London: W. and J. Innys, 1718, p. 380Google Scholar.

14 Simon Schaffer, ‘The consuming flame: electrical showmen and Tory mystics in the world of goods’, in John Brewer and Roy Porter (eds.), Consumption and the World of Goods, London: Routledge, 1993, pp. 489–526, 497. For Watson's life see Pulteney, R., Historical and Biographical Sketches, vol. 2, London: T. Cadell, 1790, pp. 295–340Google Scholar.

15 See Schaffer, op. cit. (11), p. 13; and Bertucci, ‘The electrical body of knowledge’, op. cit. (9), p. 67.

16 Watson, William, A Sequel to the Experiments and Observations, London: C. Davis, 1746, pp. 71–72Google Scholar.

17 Franklin to Peter Collinson, 29 April 1749 (hereafter Letter IV), in Cohen, Bernard, Benjamin Franklin's Experiments, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1941, p. 192Google Scholar.

18 Coleman, Charly, ‘Resacralizing the world: the fate of secularization in Enlightenment historiography’, Journal of Modern History (2010) 82, pp. 368–395Google Scholar, 395.

19 Franklin to Peter Collinson, 9 May 1753, in Labaree, op. cit. (1), vol. 4, p. 480.

20 See Schaffer, op. cit. (14), p. 496.

21 Hales, Stephen, Vegetable Staticks, London: Scientific Book Guild, 1961, p. 179Google Scholar. On Newton's sympathies with this conception of electricity see R.W. Home, ‘Newton on electricity and the aether’, in Zev Bechler (ed.), Contemporary Newtonian Research, Dordrecht: Reidel, 1982, pp. 191–213.

22 Hales, Stephen, Statical Essays, Containing Haemastatics, vol. 2, London: W. Innys and R. Manby, 1733Google Scholar, pp. 60, 96.

23 Wilson, Benjamin, An Essay towards the Explication of the Phaenomena of Electricity, London: C. Davis, 1746, pp. vii–viiiGoogle Scholar, 5, 25.

24 Hales, op. cit. (21), pp. 196–197; Wilson, Benjamin, A Treatise on Electricity, London: Printed by C. Davis, 1750, p. 201Google Scholar.

25 See Herman Boerhaave, A New Method of Chemistry (tr. Peter Shaw and Ephraim Chambers), London: printed for J. Osborn and T. Longman, 1727, p. vi. See pp. 277– 299, 301–302.

26 Watson, op. cit. (16), p. 50.

27 Watson, William, Experiments and Observations Tending to Illustrate the Nature and Properties of Electricity, London: C. Davis, 1745, p. 9Google Scholar.

28 Watson, op. cit. (16), p. 51.

29 Watson, op. cit. (27), p. 9; see Hales, op. cit. (22), pp. 95–96; and Desaguliers, Jean Theophilus, A Dissertation Concerning Electricity, London: W. Innys, 1742, p. 41Google Scholar.

30 Desaguliers, op. cit. (29), p. 31.

31 Watson, op. cit. (27), pp. 12, 13.

32 Watson, op. cit. (27), p. 37.

33 Watson, op. cit. (16), p. 31.

34 See Watson, op. cit. (16), pp. 32, 43. On Nollet's concept of electricity see Home, R.W., ‘Nollet and Boerhaave: a note on eighteenth-century ideas about electricity and fire’, Annals of Science (1979) 36, pp. 171–175Google Scholar.

35 Watson, op. cit. (16), pp. 12, 49–50.

36 Watson, op. cit. (16), pp. 72–75, 78. This declaration paraphrases a long footnote describing the philosophical division in the second edition of Peter Shaw's translation of New Method; see Boerhaave, A New Method of Chemistry, 2nd edn (tr. Peter Shaw), London: T. Longman, 1741, p. 206.

37 Wrightson, op. cit. (4), p. 115.

38 Franklin to Collinson, 25 May 1747, in Cohen, op. cit. (17), p. 178.

39 Benjamin Franklin, Dissertation on Liberty and Necessity (1725), in Labaree, op. cit. (1), vol. 1, p. 64. Hereafter Dissertation.

40 Benjamin Franklin, The Autobiography, in The Autobiography and Other Writings (ed. A. Houston), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004, pp. 1–142, 35.

41 Bernard Mandeville, The Fable of the Bees (ed. F.B. Kaye), Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1924, p. 345.

42 Franklin, Dissertation, in Labaree, op. cit. (1), vol. 1, p. 64.

43 Clarke, Samuel, A Discourse concerning the unchangeable Obligations of Natural Religion, and the truth and Certainty of the Christian Religion, in The Works of Samuel Clarke, DD, vol. 2, London: John and Paul Knapton, 1738, p. 641Google Scholar.

44 Franklin, op. cit. (39), p. 65.

45 See Aldridge, op. cit. (4); and Weinberger, op. cit. (3).

46 See Wigelsworth, J.R., Deism in Enlightenment England, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2009, pp. 154–159Google Scholar.

47 Baxter, Andrew, An Enquiry into the Nature of the Human Soul, London: printed by James Bettenham, 1733, p. 2Google Scholar. Franklin to Francis Hopkinson, 16 October 1746, in Labaree, op. cit. (1), vol. 3, pp. 85, 88.

48 Franklin to Colden, 6 August 1747, in Labaree, op. cit. (1), vol. 3, p. 168. Brackets added.

49 Colden persisted in using vis inertiae in tandem with other sorts of material power to provide a naturalistic description of gravity, reprinting Explication of the First Causes of Action in Matter in the 1750s. He was criticized heavily by European mathematicians.

50 Franklin to Collinson, 25 May 1747 (hereafter Letter II), in Cohen, op. cit. (17), p. 175.

51 Franklin, Letter II, op. cit. (50), p. 176.

52 Franklin to Peter Collinson, 28 July 1747 (hereafter Letter III), in Cohen, op. cit. (17), p. 180.

53 Franklin, Letter III, op. cit. (52), p. 181.

54 Franklin, Letter IV, op. cit. (17), pp. 189, 190.

55 Franklin, Letter III, op. cit. (52), p. 182.

56 Franklin, Letter IV, op. cit. (17), pp. 191–192.

57 Franklin, Letter IV, op. cit. (17), p. 191.

58 Franklin, Letter IV, op. cit. (17), p. 193.

59 Wilson, , A Treatise on Electricity, 2nd edn, LondonGoogle Scholar: C. Davis, 1752, p. 110, see esp. pp. 138, 176–177.

60 Minutes of the Royal Society (11 January 1749–50), in Cohen, op. cit. (17), pp. 239–240.

61 Watson, , ‘An account of the phenomena of electricity in vacuo, with some observations thereupon’, Philosophical Transactions (1751–1752) 47Google Scholar, pp. 371, 374, 375.

62 See Mitchell, T.A., ‘The politics of experiment in the eighteenth century: the pursuit of audience and the manipulation of consensus in the debate over lightning rods’, Eighteenth-Century Studies (1998) 31, pp. 307–331Google Scholar.

63 Watson, William, ‘Suggestions concerning the preventing the mischiefs, which happen to ships and their masts by lightning’, London Magazine (July 1763) 32, p. 372Google Scholar. See Heilbron, John, ‘Benjamin Franklin in Europe: electrician, Academician, politician’, Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London (2007) 61, pp. 353–373CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

64 Watson, William, ‘Observations upon the effects of lightning’, Philosophical Transactions (1764) 54, p. 220Google Scholar; see Heilbron, ‘Franklin, Haller, and Franklinist history’, op. cit. (6) (1977); and Heering, Peter, Hochadel, Oliver and Rees, David (eds.), Playing with Fire: Histories of the Lightning Rod, Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 2009Google Scholar, on divergent readings of Franklin's lightning.

65 Hales, Stephen, A Treatise on Ventilators: Part Second, London: R. Manby, 1758, p. 310Google Scholar.

66 Hales, op. cit. (65), p. 63.

67 Hales, op. cit. (65), p. 4.

68 Watson, William, ‘An account of Dr Biancchini's Recueil d'Experiences Faites a Venise sur le Medicine Electrique’, Philosophical Transactions (1751–1752) 47, pp. 19–20Google Scholar.

69 See Franklin, Benjamin, ‘An account of the effects of electricity in paralytic cases’, Philosophical Transactions (1757–1758) 50, pp. 481–483Google Scholar.

70 Franklin to Collinson, 9 May 1753, in Labaree, op. cit. (1), vol. 4, p. 481.

71 Franklin to Collinson, 9 May 1753, in Labaree, op. cit. (1), vol. 4, p. 482.

72 Franklin to Collinson, 9 May 1753, in Labaree, op. cit. (1), vol. 4, p. 482.

73 Franklin to Collinson, 9 May 1753, in Labaree, op. cit. (1), vol. 4, p. 483.

74 Franklin, op. cit. (40), p. 101.

75 Benjamin Franklin, Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind, in idem, Experiments and Observations on Electricity, op. cit. (2), p. 211.

76 Franklin, Benjamin, ‘A proposal for promoting useful knowledge among the British plantations in America’ (14 May 1743), in The Autobiography and Other Writings, op. cit. (40), p. 175Google Scholar.

77 Benjamin Franklin, Opinions and Conjectures, in Cohen, op. cit. (17), pp. 221–222.

78 Franklin to Collinson, September 1753, in Cohen, op. cit. (17), p. 269.

79 Franklin, Letter IV, op. cit. (17); Franklin to Collinson, undated (1751), in Cohen, op. cit. (17), pp. 200, 246.

80 Franklin to Kinnersley, 20 February 1762, in Cohen, op. cit. (17), pp. 371–372, 375.

81 Heilbron, op. cit. (8), pp. 611, 613.

82 Stewart, , The Rise of Public Science, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992, pp. 383–384Google Scholar. See the introduction to Jacob, Margaret and Stewart, Larry, Practical Matter: Newton's Science in the Service of Industry and Empire, 1687–1851, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004Google Scholar.

83 Watson, op. cit. (16), p. 75; See Schaffer, op. cit. (14).