America produced no Galileo or Newton, but colonists contributed significantly to the collection of scientific knowledge. The unexplored continent provided a laboratory for the study of natural phenomena. The Philadelphia Quaker John Bartram, a “down right plain Country Man,” ranged from Florida to the Great Lakes during the middle years of the eighteenth century, gathering and classifying hundreds of plants. Bartram also studied Indians closely, speculating about their origins and collecting information about their culture.
Benjamin Franklin’s far-ranging curiosity extended to science. “No one of the present age has made more important discoveries,” Thomas Jefferson declared. Franklin’s studies of electricity, which he capped in 1752 with his famous kite experiment, established him as a scientist of international stature. He also invented the lightning rod, the iron Franklin stove (a far more efficient way to heat a room than an open fireplace), bifocal spectacles, and several other ingenious devices. In addition he served fourteen years (1751-1764) in the Pennsylvania assembly. He founded a circulating library and helped to get the first hospital in Philadelphia built. He came up with the idea of a lottery to raise money for public purposes. In his spare time he taught himself Latin, French, Spanish, and Italian.
Involvement at even the most marginal level in the intellectual affairs of Europe gave New Englanders, Middle Colonists, and Southerners a chance to get to know one another. Like the spread of evangelical religion, Enlightenment values created new forms ofcom-munity in English America. Men who in 1750 were discussing botany, physics, and natural phenomena would soon be exchanging ideas about governance.
As early as 1751, for example, Franklin’s interest in statistical demography led him to predict that in a century “the greatest number of Englishmen will be on this Side of the Water.” The next year Thomas Pownall, an associate of Franklin, applied Franklin’s demographic insight and Newton’s theory of gravitation to issues of governance. In Principles of Polity (1752), Pownall concluded that the American colonies were acquiring greater mass; eventually they would exert greater pull than Great Britain itself. Enlightened rulers, understanding “the laws of nature,” would adjust the imperial system to accommodate the growing force of the colonies. Otherwise, Pownall concluded, the mighty colonies would “heave the center”—Great Britain—“out of its place.”
World History
