This article is based on remarks delivered at the board of directors meeting of the American Chemical Society, held at CHF on 21 August 2004. The essay appears in the Joseph Priestley, Radical Thinker exhibit catalogue.
If we look into the origins of chemistry, we might conclude that the second half of the 18th century is when things start to happen in a modern sense. Investigations become quantitative. Instruments that can make accurate measurements start to be devised. Experiments are conducted in a much more logical and sequential fashion. But perhaps more than anything else, science generally becomes available to the public; indeed, one could say that there was almost a thirst for this form of knowledge. The period was, as many would say, the Age of Enlightenment—a tricky phrase, and one that is wildly thrown into discourse about the 18th century. It implies that restraints from the past became loosened and that ideas were available for debate and discussion—attitudes we expect, rather than query, today.
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By Robert Anderson
Robert Anderson, who has a doctorate in physical chemistry from Oxford University, was formerly Keeper of Chemistry at the Science Museum, London, then director of the National Museums of Scotland, Edinburgh, and director of the British Museum, London. He is currently completing an edition of the correspondence of the Scottish Enlightenment chemist Joseph Black, a contemporary of Joseph Priestley’s.
See also:
Joseph Priestley,
Radical Thinker
A special exhibit at CHF
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The orrery, or planetarium, exhibited the motions of the stars and planets in miniature. Priestley owned this teaching device. Courtesy of the Historical and Interpretive Collections, Franklin Institute. Photo by Gregory Tobias.
Top Photo:
Portrait of Joseph Priestley, attributed to Ozias Humphrey (1742–1810). Chemists’ Club Collection, CHF. Photo by Will Brown.
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Science certainly became more public in the sense that it could actually be seen. On both sides of the Atlantic, money was to be made offering courses in scientific topics. Lecturers, some of them highly accomplished, would move from town to town with cartloads of demonstration apparatus, to offer spectacular displays of science. Orreries, mechanical models of the planetary system, would be cranked so that audiences could see Earth rotating about the Sun and the Moon about Earth. Air pumps created vacuums to show that guineas and feathers in tubes fall to earth at the same rate when there is no air resistance. Most thrilling, perhaps, were the machines that produced static electricity. Sometimes lecturers would persuade audiences to join hands in a circle, holding the electrodes, before turning the handle to create high voltages, thereby offering ladies and gentlemen a most exciting experience, in more than one sense of the word. Attendance at such presentations became quite fashionable.
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A letter to Thomas Jefferson from Francis Hopkinson in Philadelphia in March 1785 describes a certain Henry Moyse, who taught chemistry and physics to enthusiastic audiences of subscribers:
He arrived I believe a year ago at Boston and has come thence to this City, giving public Lectures in natural philosophy all the way. He spent the beginning of this Winter at New York, where he became very popular and a great favourite of the Ladies in particular, who crowded to his Lectures, and happy was she who [could] get him to dine or drink Tea at her House. Having gone thro’ his Course there and reaped no small Honour and Profit, he is now performing with us. . . . He exhibits three Evenings in a week in the College Hall, [and] he has already given 10 or a Dozen Lectures to an Audience of not less than 1000 and most commonly 1200 Persons. The Ladies are ready to break their necks after him. They throng to the Hall at 5 o’clock for places, altho’ his Lectures do not begin till 7.
So much for the context. Now to describe Joseph Priestley himself. That may sound simple, but in fact to characterize Priestley (1733–1804) and his life is extremely difficult because he was so complex and multifaceted.
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