In The First Scientific American: Benjamin Franklin and the Pursuit of Genius, Joyce E. Chaplin argues, “Science did indeed become part of public knowledge in the eighteenth century, and Benjamin Franklin is the ultimate proof of that. His life had the shape and texture that it did because of his abiding curiosity about nature and his interest in science” (pg. 5). Further, “Science is the knowledge of things; politics is power over people. During the eighteenth century, the two enterprises overlapped in fascinating ways” (pg. 8). The First Scientific American “examines the most important ways in which Franklin made his pursuits in the sciences and in public affairs inform and support each other” (pg. 8).
A young Franklin was aware of Newton’s Principia in 1726, though he never read it, and worked to ingratiate himself to Hans Sloane of the Royal Society. Chaplin argues these actions demonstrate that “he wanted to discover new things that would get noticed and get him noticed – hence his curiosity about the timing of eclipses at sea [which was one potential method to measure longitude] and about the way in which animal life was generated” (pg. 38). Returning to Philadelphia, “Franklin used his newspaper to circulate knowledge, including discoveries in the sciences. Indeed, the Pennsylvania Gazette is a very good measure of the popularization of natural science at midcentury” (pg. 49). Franklin also understood the role of society in structuring knowledge. Chaplin writes, “This was the central paradox of knowledge as people in Franklin’s era conceived of it: knowledge was sociable and collaborative, but not everyone could contribute to it” (pg. 55).
Following his invention of a new fireplace and early experiments, “through a series of introductions (some fortuitous, others stage-managed), Franklin slowly inserted himself into an Atlantic network of correspondents interested in natural philosophy. For him, entry into this network was an intellectual goal – and a great deal more” (pg. 93). It would also help him gain patrons. His electrical experiments easily earned him this fame. Chaplin writes, “It is easy to trace the spread of Franklin’s fame – it followed his Experiments and Observations on Electricity (1751). Initially brief, the essays went through five English editions from 1751 to 1774. Each included the primary electrical writings but then gathered more and more of Franklin’s letters and essays” (pg. 132). Chaplin argues, “Franklin may have been American, but his initial fame as a natural philosopher was not – it depended entirely on European approbation” (pg. 133). She continues, “Within two weeks of his arrival at Craven Street [in London], Franklin presented himself and the Pennsylvania Assembly’s complaints to the Penns; within three weeks, he attended his first meeting of the Society of Arts. He thus marked out the political and cultural paths he would continue to tread for the rest of his London career” (pg. 158). Further, “As Franklin extended his influence – through travel, correspondence, and force of character – his status as a philosopher became an essential passport in multiple realms” (pg. 161).
As the 1770s continued, Franklin’s influence in England waned. Despite this, “Abroad, his reputation continued to spread. In 1772, the Academie Royale des Sciences, the French equivalent of London’s Royal Society, elected Franklin an associé étranger (foreign member)” (pg. 207). Franklin’s interests also remained varied. Chaplin writes, “Franklin also knew that Cook’s first expedition would help answer a big question: how far away was the sun? The 1769 transit of Venus across the sun and the expanded dimensions of the British empire gave Britons a unique opportunity to determine the distance” (pg. 219). Shifting focus, Chaplin writes, “In one way, the American Revolution destroyed Franklin’s scientific career; the event made it impossible for him to maintain even the low level of activity he had managed in London while the crisis was brewing. But in another way, the Revolution guaranteed him immortal fame” (pg. 241). In this way, “he laid his reputation as a philosopher on the altar of the Revolution. He guaranteed his apotheosis as a genius but sacrificed any time to do further work in the sciences” (pg. 242).
Following the Revolution, “Franklin would be less troubled by fame at home. In the United States, he was not quite the idol he was in France” (pg. 312). Chaplin writes, “Because science was becoming somewhat more specialized, it was being divided from other realms of knowledge, including politics” (pg. 312). After Franklin’s death, Chaplin concludes, “Throughout Europe, the idea that men of science should enlist in public affairs was on the wane at the turn of the nineteenth century. If anything, genius was now thought to separate a person from the world” (pg. 343). ( )

Benjamin Franklin has always been a fascinating figure to me. Of course, that was just the created folk-hero persona of the man flying his kite in the rainstorm, napping during the Continental Congress and waking to shout one-liners he created during his period as a printer of Poor Richard's Almanac. Seeing this book, I hoped to get more on the scientific side of Mr. Franklin, and that's exactly what I got.

This book goes through Franklin's entire history from the viewpoint of his scientific observations. He was a man of learning, though he never went to college (lack of funds). That didn't stop him from pursuing knowledge in all forms for his entire life, though. Benjamin Franklin was a visionary, an observer of natural phenomenon, a man in search of answers. He helped shape many of the major theories of the day, especially those relating to electricity and the study of the Gulf Stream.

What I found fascinating is how little he wanted to be involved in politics, even though that is primarily what he is remembered for now. He was forced by circumstance (and the power of the positions in society he worked his way into) to often set aside his experimental mind in order to help his fledgling nation make its way in the world. Imagine how much more he could have done if politics hadn't gotten in the way. ( )

Franklin had at least five successful careers: writer, businessman, scientist, civic leader, international statesman. Biographers could probably write book length accounts on each of them as if they were separate people. I’ve been looking for something about Franklin the scientist.

I just finished The First Scientific American by Harvard professor Joyce Chaplin. It billed itself as a biography that uniquely examined his science career. Most Franklin bios run the course I laid out in the middle of my last blog, so I was hoping Chaplin’s book would dwell on his scientific period. It didn’t. At first. The first seven chapters, although enjoyable to a Franklinophile like myself, followed the normal outline of most Franklin biographies.

In one of the last chapters, however, Chaplin managed to tie up many little threads she had been quietly weaving into the narrative all along. She accomplished it by presenting Franklin nearing the end of his life and longing for time to answer questions he had posed years earlier; to finish projects he started to research but got called away; to investigate theories he had toyed with.

Americans think of him as a Founding Father. Chaplin maintained that he was first and foremost a scientist. He was on par with Newton among the greats, but all his other “successful distractions” pulled him away from accomplishing even more. He never completely stopped doing science, but it was limited to times when it was convenient. His charting of the gulf stream, for instance, and the world’s first deep sea temperature studies were done while en route to handling pesky international conflicts like the American Revolution.

There’s even a passage Chaplin quotes from 1782, where Franklin — steeped in thoughts of fluid dynamics, the circulation of heat, and the choppy landscape of England — imagines the earth’s interior to be a dense liquid churning about an iron core with the surface “swimming in or on that liquid.” The surface, therefore, was a “shell, capable of being broken and disordered.” It was just conjecture “given loose to imagination,” for which Franklin regretted observation was “out of my power.” But what he wrote is a fair description of modern plate tectonics — almost 150 years before Alfred Wegener’s continental drift theory was laughed at, and almost 200 years before it became established fact.

How can you not be amazed by this guy when book after book reveals something new like that?

Find more of my reviews at Mostly NF.

2/16/23