The British Enlightenment and Scientific Culture

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The British Enlightenment and Scientific Culture

• Mark Knights

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The Legacy of the Enlightenment

• Liberalism
• Free market
• Natural rights
• Science
• Ideas about the league of nations
• Questioning the enlightenment
• Romanticism
• Conservatism
• gender

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Is Enlightenment a useful term?

• Ignores earlier change (Renaissance and
  Reformation)
• Never monolithic
• Tensions within ranks of the enlightened, across
  time, space and class
• Can appear very abstract
• J.C.D.Clark emphasises continuity of older
  attitudes
• Is it revolutionary? Does GB Enlightenment
  validate or subvert the established order?
  Compatible with, even generated by, Whig culture?
• We have already examined some of its dimensions
  politics, religion, ideological division over
  rights and revolution, wealth creation, print
  culture

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The Enlightenment message

• Reason and experiment
• Progress towards the good life
• Reassessment of relationships between
• Man and God superstition prejudice toleration
  deism (Toland) and atheism Bible (Thomas
  Woolston, Six Discourses 1727-30) Calvinism
  rational religion priestcraft miracles
• People and rulers slavery and liberty, the role
  of the public balanced constitution the
  revolution of 1689 censorship
• Wealth and luxury
• Men and women sexual morality
• Man and man how to talk to each other?
• Europe and the wider world

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The pursuit of knowledge

• The dissemination of knowledge print, coffee
  houses, museums and collections, libraries,
  conversation
• Understanding the natural world the body, the
  natural world, the planetary system.

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The British Enlightenment

• Earlier than other European countries?
• 1689 revolution
• John Locke
• John Toland
• Isaac Newton
• Scottish and/or English Enlightenment?
• Edinburgh David Hume, Francis Hutcheson, Adam
  Smith London or the provinces?
• Voltaires Lettres Philosophique ou Lettres
  Anglaises (1733) looked to GB The Enclyclopédie
  originated in scheme to translate Ephraim
  Chambers Cyclopedia (1728)
• Paine and the debate about enlightenment

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A sociable, provincial and practical enlightenment

• 2000 clubs in early C18th,
• Whole variety of different reasons social
  artistic (Society of Dilletante Dr Johnsons
  Literary Club) debating (Robin Hood Society)
  politics (eg Sons of Freedom the Antigallicans)
  science
• Radical clubs
• Masonic societies. Freemasonry as GB invention,
  modelled as microcosm of commonwealth fostering
  brotherhood, benevolence, conviviality, liberty,
  a measure of egalitarianism aimed at artisans.
  1717 formation of the Grand Lodge of England 52
  lodges in GB alone by 1725, nearly 300 by 1768

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Spalding Gentlemens society 1712 scientific
and literary society

• Proposals for establishing a Society of Gentlemen
  for the supporting mutual benevolence, and their
  improvements in the liberal sciences and polite
  learning.
• That the persons who sign these proposals, and
  none other be esteemed of the Society.
• That they choose a president monthly, to moderate
  in all disputes, and read all papers whatsoever
  aloud.
• That they meet every Monday at Mr. Youngers
  coffee-house in Spalding, at two in the
  afternoon, from September to May, and in other
  months at four, unless detained by business of
  moment or indisposition, under pain of forfeiting
  twopence a time for a fund for books etc., except
  those who live three miles off from Spalding.
• That he who is absent four Mondays together shall
  on the fifth communicate to the Society something
  new or curious, with an excuse for absenting
  himself, upon pain of being struck out of this
  establishment, if the majority of gentlemen then
  present vote it so or pay sixpence, to be put to
  a fund to buy books etc.
• November 3 1712. We do approve of these proposals
  and agree to observe them as members of this
  society

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The Lunar Society in Birmingham

• Group of friends began to meet formally 1775
  every month on Sunday nearest full moon
• Joseph Priestley
• Josiah Wedgwood
• Erasmus Darwin
• Matthew Boulton
• James Watt
• http//www.revolutionaryplayers.org.uk/home.stm

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Soho House, venue of the Lunar Society
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Erasmus Darwin 1731-1802

• Physician, poet, botanist and campaigner
• Fellow of the Royal Society 1757 formed one of
  the first formal theories of evolution in
  Zoonomia (1794-6), and versified them in the
  Temple of Nature (posthumous) motto everything
  from shells described photosynthesis
• A fool, you know, is a man who never tried an
  experiment in his life
• Deist That there exists a superior Ens Entium,
  which formed these wonderful creatures is
  mathematical demonstration. That HE influences
  things by a particular providence is not so
  evident. The probability, according to my notion,
  is against it, since general laws seem sufficient
  for that end (1754)
• Designer of carriages to take him on medical
  rounds designed a speaking machine with a
  wooden mouth and leather lips, capable of
  producing sounds p, b, m and a so well as to
  deceive all who heard it unseen, when it
  pronounced the words mama, papa, map and pam
  mechanical copier of hand-writing
• Anti-slavery

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Joseph Priestley

• experimenter with electricity (friend of Benjamin
  Franklin author of work on electricity in 1767)
  and then with air and gases (Discoverer of
  carbonisation 1773 and identifier of oxygen in
  1774 and amonia)
• Dissenting minister, having studied at
  Nonconformist academy at Daventry Unitarian
  (anti-trinitarian) natural philosophy
• Political radical anti-slavery (part of
  deputation welcoming Equiano when he came to
  speak in Bham in 1789 founding member of the
  Constitutional Society. His house (Fair Hill, in
  Bham) was burnt in Church and King riot 1791
  and emigrated to Pennsylvania

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Josiah Wedgwood 1730-1795

• Born into family of potters 1769 opened his own
  factory at Etruria, near Stoke on Trent
• Experimenter and refiner and esp interested in
  properties of minerals and combustion processes
  eg Barium Sulphate produced Jasper in 1773
  (Jasperware durable, unglazed, usually blue
  though here a yellow) 1783 Fellow of the Royal
  Society invented pyrometer to measure oven
  temperatures
• Keen interest in improving transport (canal and
  roads)
• I776 pro-American involved in anti-slavery
  movement committee member of Society for the
  Suppression of the Slave Trade. This will be an
  epoch before unknown to the World, and the
  subject of freedom will be more canvassed and
  better understood in the enlightened nations
  letter to Franklin, 1787
• Daughter married son of Erasmus Darwin, and was
  mother of Charles.

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Matthew Boulton 1728-1809

• Son of Birmingham metal toy manufacturer
• 1762 established Soho factory with partner John
  Fothergill producing steel buttons and
  reproductions of oil paintings 1767 met Watt,
  when needing more power, and Watt used Soho for
  experiments with steam-engine 1775 partnership
  Arkwright pioneered its use in cotton mills 1788
  began coining for East India Company and Sierra
  Leone
• Factory, specialised labour but also introduced
  early social insurance scheme for his workers
• More conservative politics anti-American but
  greeted Equiano

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James Watt 1736-1819

• Scot with little formal education instrument
  maker
• Asked to repair early steam engine experimented
  with improving it by adding separate condenser
  used initially in Cornish tin and copper mines to
  pump water then spinning.
• 1766 surveyor of canal route from Forth to Clyde
  went to London to lobby for it and stopped in
  Birmingham on return, staying with Darwin and
  went round Soho.
• Fellow of the Royal Society and interested, like
  Priestley, in composition of water Priestley
  mixed Hydrogen and Oxygen the identification was
  in part the result of the exchange between them
  (Darwin had started the discussion)

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Medicine institutions

• Foundation of hospitals Westminster 1720, Guys
  1724, St Georges 1733, The London 1740, the
  Middlesex 1743
• Priestley founded Leeds Infirmary. 1784 the
  generosity of donors proved that the charity of
  Mankind has been progressive and reflects
  peculiar Lustre on the present period
• Specialist ones. The Foundling Hospital.
  Fundraising via art and music (Hogarth and
  Handel).

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Inoculation and vacinationLady Mary Wortley
Montagu (1689-1762) In 1717 Lady Montague
arrived with her husband, the British ambassador,
at the court of the Ottoman Empire. she noted
that the local practice of deliberately
stimulating a mild form of the disease through
inoculation conferred immunity. She had the
procedure performed on both her children. By the
end of the eighteenth century, the English
physician Edward Jenner was able to cultivate a
serum in cattle, which, when used in human
vaccination, eventually led to the worldwide
eradication of the illness.
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A consultation 1762 Hoares picture shows
Baths (1738) Royal National Hospital for
Rheumatic Diseases two physicians and patients
with arthritis, palsy and skin disease
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Medical developments

• Understanding the human body illness as integral
  to the body or external? The mechanical body
• The medical market and drugs
• Print culture and self-help books Cheyne, The
  English Malady (1733) Buchan Domestic Medicine
  (1769) Beddoes, Consideration on the Medical Use
  of Factitious Airs (1794)
• The danger of hypochondria

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Understanding the mind and personality

• The study of man and mind
• Lockes tabula rasa the self created by senses
  no integral self? Disguise and masquerade.
• Mandeville mans appetites and vices, man as
  self-interested but all that was beneficial
  greed, lust, vanity and ambition could produce
  public good
• Hume mankind are so much the same, in all times
  and places constant principles of human nature
  that were discoverable but the self was not a
  constant unity and was highly contingent
• Romantic sincerity?
• Madness

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Public lectures

• In 1739 the following advertisement was placed in
  the Norfolk Gazette by John Barker, surgeon and
  brewer
• And for the further diversion of the gentlemen
  and ladies attending the race meeting at New
  Buckenham, Norfolk, between the hours of three
  and four a clock in the afternoon, will be
  performed many of the philosophical experiments
  that were performed in Gresham College in the
  Time of the famous MR BOYLE and likewise will be
  shewn many experiments that are now performed by
  the ingenious Mons. Desaguiliers. The next day,
  at the Assembly, will be shewn the same
  Experiments'.
• In 1819 John Griscom noted that 'there is
  scarcely a town of considerable note in Great
  Britain, which is not sometimes visited by these
  travelling lecturers, who, by means of portable
  apparatus, and a facility in communicating
  instruction, impart the benefits of useful
  knowledge to hundreds and thousands who might
  otherwise remain destitute of its advantages. The
  multiplication of the means of gaining
  information, even in those branches of
  instruction which a few years ago were confined
  to colleges and universities, is a conspicuous
  feature of the present day'.

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Public Lectures (1809)
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Chemical lectures 1810