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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 February 2012
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.
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.
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5 Delbourgo, op. cit. (4), pp. 16, 42, 45–46.
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19 Franklin to Peter Collinson, 9 May 1753, in Labaree, op. cit. (1), vol. 4, p. 480.
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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.
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23 Wilson, Benjamin, An Essay towards the Explication of the Phaenomena of Electricity, London: C. Davis, 1746, pp. vii–viiiGoogle Scholar, 5, 25.
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31 Watson, op. cit. (27), pp. 12, 13.
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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.
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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.
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45 See Aldridge, op. cit. (4); and Weinberger, op. cit. (3).
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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