A Most Amazing Scene of Wonders: Electricity and Enlightenment in Early America

by James Delbourgo

Benjamin Franklin's invention of the lightning rod is the founding fable of American science, but Franklin was only one of many early Americans fascinated by electricity. As a dramatically new physical experience, electricity amazed those who dared to tame the lightning and set it coursing through their own bodies. Thanks to its technological and medical utility, but also its surprising ability to defy rational experimental mastery, electricity was a powerful experience of enlightenment, at once social, intellectual, and spiritual.

In this compelling book, James Delbourgo moves beyond Franklin to trace the path of electricity through early American culture, exploring how the relationship between human, natural, and divine powers was understood in the eighteenth century. By examining the lives and visions of natural philosophers, spectacular showmen, religious preachers, and medical therapists, he shows how electrical experiences of wonder, terror, and awe were connected to a broad array of cultural concerns that defined the American Enlightenment. The history of lightning rods, electrical demonstrations, electric eels, and medical electricity reveals how early American science, medicine, and technology were shaped by a culture of commercial performance, evangelical religion, and republican politics from mid-century to the early republic.

The first book to situate early American experimental science in the context of a transatlantic public sphere, "A Most Amazing Scene of Wonders" offers a captivating view of the origins of American science and the cultural meaning of the American Enlightenment. In a story of shocks and sparks from New England to the Caribbean, Delbourgo brilliantly illuminates a revolutionary New World of wonder.

Genres: History, Nonfiction

384 pages, Hardcover

First published October 15, 2006

Reviews

[Robert Geraci · Rating 4 out of 5]

this is a great book about the cultural uses of electricity in 18th century united states. the book explores religious, political, and social relationships in coherent and intriguing fashion. there were occasional moments where i lost track of precisely what the section or chapter was arguing, but i could resolve those with a quick return to the beginning of that part. the author's prose is lucid, his argument interesting, and the depth of his approach truly engaging. i'd definitely recommend this excellent book to anyone interested in the history of science and/or the role of science and technology in culture.

[Shane Avery · Rating 4 out of 5]

Super scholarship mostly. I do think the author over states his case (see 52-53, which is anemic and silly) and renders his argument needlessly polemical in an attempt to make it seem grounding breaking and original. Of course, he claims that "we have no cultural history of science and enlightenment in America," (7) which may be true because America seemed to be moving away from the Enlightenment project by the early 19th c. towards something else -- romanticism, realism, federalism, providentialism, whatever... but not enlightenment rationalism..., which is probably why he ignores 19th c. entirely