Science and the Founding Fathers: Science in the Political Thought of Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and James Madison

by I. Bernard Cohen

General readers, students of American history, and professional historians alike will profit from reading this engaging presentation of an aspect of American history conspicuously absent from the usual textbooks and popular presentations of the political thought of early America. Thomas Jefferson was the only president who could read and understand Newton's Principia . Benjamin Franklin is credited with establishing the science of electricity. John Adams had the finest education in science that the new country could provide, including "Pnewmaticks, Hydrostaticks, Mechanicks, Staticks, Opticks." James Madison, chief architect of the Constitution, peppered his Federalist Papers with references to physics, chemistry, and the life sciences. For these men science was an integral part of life―including political life. This is the story of their scientific education and of how they employed that knowledge in shaping the political issues of the day, incorporating scientific reasoning into the Constitution.

Genres: History, Science, Nonfiction, American History, History Of Science, Biography, Politics

370 pages, Paperback

First published January 22, 1995

Reviews

[Gene · Rating 5 out of 5]

A lot of repetition, but much information to think about. A good look into how the founding fathers developed their thoughts & wrote the constitution while influenced by the science of the time. This also illustrates how much we have learned & how ignorant we once were. It's amazing to realize that we didn't know something but made up stupid explanations.

[Elizabeth · Rating 2 out of 5]

Thoroughly researched but unless you've got a strong grasp of all the scientific principles you're bound to get lost at some point.

[Brett Williams · Rating 4 out of 5]

Historian of science Bernard Cohen argues there was no bigger influence on the thinking of America’s Founders and the lifeways of our modern West than the cast of mind brought about by the new science of Isaac Newton. In a sound bite, while Enlightenment philosophy gets the credit, it was science that created America and the Western world. With Newton’s science able to solve problems intractable for millennia, that same rigor was, during the Enlightenment, applied to that greatest question raised since the Agricultural Upheaval: how to govern a volatile species of mass strangers. The Scientific Revolution preceded the Enlightenment and set its course.

Bernard chronicles this influence on Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and James Madison. When he was young, Benjamin Franklin tried to meet Newton in London. One of Thomas Jefferson’s favorite books was Newton’s Principia, even working through Newton’s calculus. “When Jefferson went to Philadelphia in 1797 to be inaugurated as vice-president of the United States,” writes Cohen, “he brought with him a collection of fossil bones to illustrate a lecture on paleontology that he was to make at the American Philosophical Society,” a society created by Franklin. John Adams studied Newtonian mechanics at Harvard, noting the laws in arguments about state and national legislatures. After James Madison’s study of Newton’s laws at Princeton, he used them to make comparisons between the natural and human world in the Federalist. So much so one critic claimed “to explain the meaning of its several abstruse parts by MATHEMATICAL demonstration and his endeavors to prove its right angular construction… that he next have recourse to CONIC SECTIONS, by which he will be enabled with greater facility, to discover the many windings of his favorite system.” The times bathed in this new way as represented by Adam Smith’s capitalism, and Franklin’s associate David Hume in the latter’s attempt to “create a new science of human moral behavior.” Voltaire wrote a popular book on the subject still in print, “Elements of Newton’s Philosophy.”

Bernard asks why science doesn’t get the credit he thinks it deserves in founding America and the West. Because, he says, only Jefferson and Teddy Roosevelt can be considered president-scientists in any part of their lives. The rest are politicians, lawyers, generals, business tycoons. And those who report the history are historians schooled in politics, philosophy, wars, and the fall of civilizations. “The result is that our library shelves groan under the burden of scholarly and amateur investigations of almost every conceivable fact of the personal lives, thoughts, and achievements of the founders of our country except for science.”

An interesting book. That such a movement could have happened is both invigorating to know, given it happened, and depressing, given it ended.

[Joel · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is extremely repetitive. Why didn't the editor cut some of this stuff? Plus the main point is not made well--science seems to have been a source of analogies rather than truly influencing political thought. I give it 4 stars because Cohen wanders off on tangents a lot. If you are interested in the scientific education available at the time, the controversy surrounding lightning rods, or Woodrow Wilson's use of Darwin and Herbert Spencer in his historical writing, you will get something out of this book. If not, pass it by.

[Steven Yaskell · Rating 4 out of 5]

This Victor S. Thomas Emeritus Professor of the History of Science at Harvard University cautiously avoids conflating what most of the founders did with their political action and any actual science (as we know it as it mostly is known as, now: lab tests, experiments etc.). Where they did, predominately Jefferson and very much so from Franklin, and to some extent Adams and Madison, we have a firm linkage to that and their political thoughts in a careful, academic and factual manner. He keeps things clear and separate unless they really link. I wished that the author were a bit more lyrical, such as the way Stephen Jay Gould might have treated the subject. Alas, Gould was no science historian in a trained and systematic way.

Where overlaps are made, Cohen provides ample proof or at least much qualitative data to consider. For example, John Adams also studied physics at Harvard, not just law. My take was that Adams's general misuse of laws of motion actually fed other theories of applied physics as they might work in practical politics, thus diverging from classical political science over to perhaps a uniquely American variant of the same.

Though he disagreed with Franklin often (frankly, they did not get along) there was grist for the mill of creative positive action in creating America's hallowed republic between these two, in particular. It is not trivial, as the case that unfolds, shows. Curiously, Adams sold the idea of a senate of "natural noblemen" to Franklin (who detested the idea) on the anti-pure democratic principle of a senate serving to remove the deadlock that would result from the executive branch-to-house of representative in-fighting. That is, seen as the physics of statics, the relation between the house and president would've been a scale: one side or the other would stack the deck to create immovability. That meant, of course, political immovability. The addition of the senate with its votes made a merry go round (a good metaphor for these circuses) of all three. That is, they would never have a deadlock, and debate would be forced between the actors (another fitting description). Though it made a mess, Franklin, I believe, saw the practical point. That "mess" keeps America free in a way Cohen leaves carefully out (that I WILL not) - in imitation of the Iroquois League that gave particularly Franklin and Washington (who fought in the French and Indian War where they witnessed it) the motivation for making a government foundation based on FORCING COMMUNICATION, especially in the house of representatives, where the needs of the least must be considered before the eyes of those who have the most. The Iroquois -whom Franklin had tamely labeled "uncouth savages" in order to sell the idea of how the British might govern the American colonies - had this (I would call) civilized idea c. 300 years before the Europeans ever witnessed it. Europeans and even many born Americans do not see the original Iroquois in American federal political instrumentation. The fact that Franklin had personally invited Iroquois League diplomats and scholar sachems to congressional foundation meetings in the 1775 timeframe to lend their critiques via translation is noted, documented, accepted - and ignored. A House of Representatives Act (in 1982) formally thanks the remnant of that league for its seeding of this very beneficent idea in the hard killer skulls of "civilized Europeans." "Civilization" to the most is still the outcome of increased technological superiority in prosecuting warfare (see the works of John Keegan).

The founders of the American state clearly saw the point. Even if the Iroquois idea was to spare lives that cannot be wasted due to the pre-technological conditions they lived in, we should consider the Adamesque finesse that the STRUCTURE of such a body, so formulated on forcing "talk," will serve to spare ALL LIVES. Adams and company turned the definition of what "civilization" is around - in my estimate - towards a proper orientation.

[Bruce · Rating 4 out of 5]

Split between science in the thought of the founding fathers and scientific thought at the time of the founding fathers this book gives one pause in interpreting the basic documents of this country. The meanings of words and phrases have changed which should give one pause as one attempts to use the 'intent' of the founding fathers to buttress their arguments. The author provides a glimpse into the scientific training, practice and writings of the four founding fathers covered in this work and one may assume that other 'gentlemen' of that era had similar training and thus understood the analogies and metaphors used during the debates and 'discussions' that went into the development of the basic documents of this country. Though the author does not discuss Constitutional issues per se, one can deduce that with their understanding of science they would have designed a document that would adapt to its time.

[David Kent · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very useful book detailing the "science" side of Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and others that Cohen includes as founding fathers. The book is dense with information and clearly Isaac Newton's Principia and Opticks influenced the men that designed the structure of our nation. Cohen appears enamored of Jefferson but dismissive of Adams, and perhaps contrives the part about Madison, but the portions about Benjamin Franklin are most interesting in how they contrast with the elitism of the others. Worth reading but prepare yourself for depth rather than a page-turning style.

[Phil · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really enjoyed reading this book and especially the after notes at the end. I have studied a lot of American history and this book showed how much I still don't know. The science of Jefferson and Franklin is especially engaging.

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very dense book and not to be lightly taken by the history lay-man. Never the less it was a valuable research resource for one or my articles. Maybe I will attempt to reread the book and possibly enjoy it this time.

[Kate · Rating 3 out of 5]

I lacked the intellectual wherewithal to finish this, but I found it generally agreeable. Section on Franklin particularly enjoyable. Maybe some other time.