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Science and Worldviews in the Classroom: Joseph Priestley and Photosynthesis

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Abstract

This paper elaborates on the life and publications of Joseph Priestley, the eighteenth-century polymath. The paper outlines his particular place in the European Enlightenment; it stresses the importance of philosophy and worldview in his scientific work on pneumatic chemistry, the composition of air, and his discovery of the process of photosynthesis (or the ‘restoration of air’ as it was called at the time); finally the paper indicates ways in which Priestley’s work on photosynthesis can be utilised in the school classroom to advance the understanding of scientific subject matter, to promote an understanding of the nature of scientific procedure and methodology, and finally to evaluate some basic tenets of the European Enlightenment that Priestley so passionately advocated.

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Notes

  1. Among countless studies documenting children’s inadequate (given age and grade level) understanding of photosynthesis see: Barker (1995), Cañal (1999), Eisen and Stavy (1988), Lin and Hu (2003), Wandersee (1985) and references therein.

  2. The term ‘photosynthesis’ was coined in 1898 by the Englishman Charles Barnes (1858–1910) to denote the complex biological–chemical process of the ‘synthesis of complex carbon compounds out of carbonic acid, in the presence of chlorophyll, under the influence of light’ (Gest 2002, p. 7). The equation for the process is: 6CO2 + 6H2O + solar energy → C6H12O6 + 6O2.

  3. For some of the arguments and literature, see Matthews (1994) and contributions to McComas (1998).

  4. Guides to some of this literature can be found in Bunge (1994) and Passmore (1994).

  5. See the studies of Robert Schofield (1964, 1983, 1997, 2004); John McEvoy (1978–1979, 1983, 1990; McEvoy and McGuire 1975) and William Brock (2008).

  6. The definitive and exhaustive biographical study of Priestley is Robert Schofield’s two volume work (Schofield 1997, 2004). Priestley’s autobiography (2 vols.) is in Priestley (1806/1970). Recent popular accounts of Priestley can be found in Jackson (2005) and Johnson (2009). The following anthologies contain excellent material on Priestley: Rivers and Wykes (2008), Schwartz and McEvoy (1990), and Anderson and Lawrence (1987).

  7. This was reprinted 16 times and had many translations. A selection of the text is in Passmore (1965).

  8. In his Memoirs Priestley writes: ‘I felt occasionally such distress of mind as it is not in my power to describe, and which I still look back upon with horror’. (Priestley 1806/1970, p. 71)

  9. In the United Kingdom, the established Anglican Church was powerfully backed by the State. The Cavalier (Royalist) Parliament passed the Corporation Act in 1661 and the Act of Uniformity in 1662. These Acts prohibited dissenters or ‘nonconformists’ (Presbyterians, Anabaptists, and later Methodists and Unitarians) from government office, universities, and being officers in the armed forces; and prevented them from establishing their own congregations, schools, and academies. The same strictures applied to Roman Catholics; and of course to Jews, Muslims and Atheists. For good measure, the ‘Five-Mile Act’ was passed in 1665, this prohibited a Dissenting minister or Catholic priest from coming within 5 miles of a city, corporate town or borough.

  10. For accounts of the Dissenting academies see Parker (1914), McLachlan (1931), Watts (1983, 1991) and Wykes (1996).

  11. The same year that Priestley went to Daventry, Edward Gibbon was sent to Oxford to further his education, but instead of a community of scholars, he found only ‘wastrels and gossips’ (Gibbon 1776–1788/1963, p. 13). Richard Westfall in his biography of Newton says that Cambridge at the time was ‘fast approaching the status of an intellectual wasteland’ (Westfall 1980, p. 190).

  12. A good popular account of the intellectual entanglement of Priestley and Lavoisier is Jackson’s A World on Fire (Jackson 2005). See also Severinghaus (2003).

  13. For a selection of Priestley’s political writings see Miller (1993). For commentary on his political philosophy see Graham (1989, 1990) and Kramnick (1986).

  14. Erasmus Darwin was a member of the society; it was far more energetic and progressive at the time than the august Royal Society. See studies of the society by Schofield (1963) and Uglow (2002).

  15. For studies of Priestley in America see Smith (1920), Graham (1995, 2008) and Johnson (2009).

  16. The Priestley House is now a National Monument. In 1874, at the centenary of oxygen’s discovery, the American Chemical Society was founded there.

  17. There are numerous studies of Priestley’s theological and religious life. See Clark (1990), Brooke (1990) and Wykes (2008).

  18. A full bibliographic listing of Priestley’s books, pamphlets and articles is contained in Schofield (2004, pp. 407–422). Google-Scholar-Books is an excellent source.

  19. For selections of important Enlightenment texts see Gay (1970, 1977), Eliot and Stern (1979), Kramnick (1995) and Hyland et al. (2003). Recent comprehensive Enlightenment studies are Porter (2000) and Israel (2001).

  20. At the time ‘moral philosophy’ covered a broad field, it meant more or less all studies other than ‘natural philosophy’ (or science, in our terms).

  21. The Newtonian programme in natural philosophy, and its extension to social and moral philosophy, was not greeted with complete and unqualified enthusiasm in Europe. There were local struggles over its science and its wider application. On the former see Guerlac (1981), on the latter see Shank (2008).

  22. For Priestley’s materialism see (Priestley 1777a, b, 1778). For critical exposition and discussion of his position see Schofield (1970, pp. 261ff), Tapper (1982) and Dybikowski (2008).

  23. See the excellent two-volume Jonathan Barnes edition of Aristotle’s Collected Works (Barnes 1984). For good introductions to his thought see Lloyd (1968) and Adler (1978). For an informed and sympathetic account of his formative role in Western natural philosophy see Grant (2004, chap. 2).

  24. See Delaporte (1982) and discussion in Barker (1995).

  25. This is the expression coined by Gaston Bachelard (Bachelard 1934/1984) to indentify deep-seated, unconscious conceptual barriers to possible kinds of scientific investigations. These categories blocked completely some lines of investigation and shaped the form of others. The notion was elaborated and utilised by Louis Althusser (1969).

  26. For qualification of this standard interpretation, see Newman (2004, chap. 5).

  27. See Principe (1998). For Boyle’s relationship with contemporary chemistry, see Boas (1958).

  28. Called ‘fixed’ because he thought it was, as a whole air, trapped or ‘fixed’ in calcium and other metal carbonates; the heating released the air; when dissolved in limewater and precipitated, it again became fixed.

  29. This was a refinement of a collecting trough first used by Stephen Hales; it involved linking a retort flask to a jar inverted over water. Priestley then used mercury for collecting water-soluble airs—a technique not previously thought of. He recognised the source of error in Hales equipment: ‘I have never thought the communication between the external and internal air sufficiently cut off, unless glass, or a body of water, or in some cases, quicksilver, have intervened between them’ (Priestley 1772b, p. 252).

  30. This was a 12 inch (30 cm) magnifying glass with a 20 inch (50 cm) focal distance that gave more heat than any other means available. Continental chemists were purportedly using it to melt diamonds.

  31. Almost to the end Priestley failed to distinguish carbon monoxide and hydrogen; both were colourless, odourless and inflammable.

  32. For further details of the paper and the Copley Medal see Guerlac (1957) and McKie (1961).

  33. Good accounts of early pneumatic chemistry can be found in Stillman (1924/1960, chap. 12), Leicester (1956/1971, chap. 14), Partington (1957, chap. 6), Siegfried (2002, chap. 6). It is noteworthy that most of the major figures in the new science were born within 20 years of each other: David Macbride (1726), Joseph Black (1728), Jan Ingen-Housz (1730), Henry Cavendish (1731), Joseph Priestley (1733), Richard Kirwan (1733), Carl Scheele (1742), Jean Senebier (1742) and Antoine Lavoisier (1743).

  34. See Priestley (1772a). An informative discussion of the soda-water episode, with diagrams of apparatus, can be found in (Gibbs 1967, pp. 57–58, 69–70). See also Golinksi (1999, pp. 112–117).

  35. See Coley (1984).

  36. See contributions to Frängsmyr et al. (1990) and Wise (1995).

  37. For an informative discussion of the Romantic responses to science, see Passmore (1978, 1994).

  38. The poem is in O’Brien (1989, p. 62). This book also contains a wealth of material on Warrington Academy and Priestley’s teaching career there.

  39. For more on the nitrous air test, see Boantza (2007, pp. 513–516), Conant (1948a, pp. 74–75), Gibbs (1967, pp. 76–77), and McEvoy (1978–1979, pt. II, pp. 105–108).

  40. The complete 11-page address is reproduced in McKie (1961).

  41. He did not recognise that the green matter was indeed carried as microscopic airborne particles; so despite his closed vessels, it was already there.

  42. After the passage of 60 years, a still excellent treatment of the historical development of early photosynthesis studies is the essay of Leonard Nash in James Conant’s Harvard Case Studies in Experimental Science (Nash 1948, pp. 369–434). For more recent work see Morton (1981) and Pennazio (2005).

  43. See Gest (2000) for discussion of the priority debate concerning Priestley and Ingen-Housz’s contribution to the understanding of the role of light in the vegetable ‘restoration of air’.

  44. The ideas of Design and Providence were famously articulated by another of Priestley’s contemporaries, William Paley (1743–1805), whose Natural Theology (Paley 1802/2006) was a compulsory text for all students in Cambridge and Oxford.

  45. See, among numerous sources, Funkenstein (1986), Grant (2004), and contributions to Lindberg and Numbers (1986).

  46. See Priestley (1787).

  47. These are all philosophically and theologically complex options. Clearly Christian and Islamic belief among philosophically and scientifically sophisticated people survived Darwin, with many retaining some conception of Providence. The life-long atheist Anthony Flew has recently said that ‘intelligent design’ is in fact the only possible ‘best explanation’ for the emergence of life on earth. Good overviews of the options taken in the nineteenth century are Moore (1979) and Brooke (1991, chap. 8). Among numerous philosophically and scientifically sophisticated modern such works are Jaki (1978), Mascall (1956) and McGrath (2004). See also contributions to the journals Science and Christian Belief and Science and Christian Faith.

  48. See contributions to the journal Science & Education from its first volume in 1992 to the present.

  49. In 1733, the year of Priestley’s birth, John Kay invented the flying shuttle that allowed one weaver to do the work of many; in 1768, while Priestley was ministering in Leeds, James Hargraves produced the spinning jenny which multiplied the effectiveness of cloth production, one year later James Watt patented his steam engine one of which was soon powering Josiah Wedgwood’s pottery enabling his export of fine china worldwide. All of this technology enabled embryonic capitalism to take root in Priestley’s England. Priestley’s individualism, liberalism, his democratic concerns for parliamentary representation, and his arguments for minimising State power—was all music to youthful capitalist ears.

  50. See Wandersee and Roach (1998) for examples of types and effectiveness of such vignettes.

  51. For Mach’s educational theory and practice see Matthews (1990).

  52. See Levine (2000) and references therein.

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  1. School of Education, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW, 2052, Australia

    Michael R. Matthews

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Matthews, M.R. Science and Worldviews in the Classroom: Joseph Priestley and Photosynthesis. Sci & Educ 18, 929–960 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11191-009-9184-8

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