Posted on 12/13/2009 6:41:44 PM PST by Congressman Billybob
Ben Franklin: On Science
by Ben Franklin
As most of you know, the international recognition of me as a scientist began with the day that I captured lightning with a kite. Had I done that experiment the way the popular myth, I probably would have been electrocuted, an early end to an ordinary career.
You probably recall that my formal education ended when I was 14. After that, I bought and read every worthwhile book I could find. I died in 1790, but one aspect of the Other Side that I can share with you is that we get to read and see whatever interests us about the continuing fate of this nation we created, and started on its way.
You are in the middle of national consideration of laws that would involve more than a trillion dollars of public and private spending for purposes based, or claiming to be based, on scientific weather considerations. Now, I know the word trillion, but I never had occasion to use it. I recall that the greatest warship Congress approved in my day, the USF Constitution and known as “Old Ironsides” now lies at harbor in Boston. She cost about $60,000 to build and equip. That gives you an idea of how far the value of the dollar has declined.
Before you commit to spending a trillion dollars or more on any program, perhaps you should begin with the science offered to support it. Consider my experiment with a kite in a thunderstorm in Philadelphia in 1752. I did not get lightning to strike my kite, and come down the wet string to a key tied directly to it. There was a thin wire as an antenna on the kite. Insulated silk held the key away from me. At the bottom was a Leyden jar.
What’s that, you say? That was a glass jar with an insulated top and a metal bar with a small knob outside and a large one inside. When exposed to electricity it would store that. The Leyden jar is the grandfather of the millions of batteries you use at home, in offices, in your cars and pockets. You really have done marvelous things with this electricity business, haven’t you?
I was not the only scientist to speculate that lightning might be composed of electricity. I was just the first to develop a non-lethal experiment to test that theory. The experiment succeeded but the science did not stop there. I wrote up my experiment, telling exactly what I did, how I did it, and what results I got.
Ultimately, that description was translated into many languages, and my experiment was reproduced, with the same results, in most nations of the world which had academic or scientific communities. This is an essential point of science, if the purpose is to advance the knowledge of mankind. It must be released to the world, all the methods and all the data.
No matter what degrees a “scientist” has, or what exalted position he holds (and recall that I held no degrees and no scientific positions) he is not a scientist but merely a politician if he does not report all aspects of his work, both methods an data, to all other scientists who request them. The point is to establish the truth, not to sell a slogan.
It is even worse when scientists engage in forging their data or lying to the scientific community. Such people are frauds – and there have been many scientific frauds in the centuries since I was born. Lastly, science is not determined by majority vote. Most scientists believed that the Earth was flat and mariners who sailed too far fall off, before Columbus set out to sail around the world. (Yes, going around the world to Asia was Columbus’ intent when he set sail in 1492.)
A majority of scientists believed that the Sun resolved around the Earth, when Galileo invented the telescope, observed the Solar System, and concluded that the Earth revolved around the Sun. (Contrary to popular myth, it was university professors, not the Catholic Church, who led the effort to silence Galileo. Their positions were threatened by this upstart with his new theory.)
Understanding how honest science occurs can protect you from frauds. It’s not as complicated as rocket science. It can be as simple as a man flying a kite in a Philadelphia rain storm.
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About the real Author: John Armor appears and speaks as Ben Franklin, To see how he would present Franklin discussing science, go to YouTube.com and search for “Franklin Comes to Franklin” Contact the author at John_Armor@aya.yale
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John / Billybob
BTTT
I died in 1790
Direct quote there. haha.
Great column!
This quote is taken from F.A. Hayek’s book “The Fatal Conceit - The Errors of Socialism”
Bookmark for later
Superb!
The “scientific” argument presented against Columbus, was the estimation of the diameter of the Earth made by Eratosthenes. And they were CORRECT, if he hadn't hit the islands off America, Columbus would have never made it to India - just as he was told by the learned men of his day.
OK, I’m being picky, but here goes: First, the Leyden jar was a form of capacitor, not a battery. Second, I doubt that a silk thread would insulate you from lightning. With enough voltage, electricity can travel through things not normally considered good conductors.
A capacitor is a type of battery.
I always rejoice to hear of your being still employed in experimental researches into nature, and of the success you meet with. The rapid progress true science now makes, occasions my regretting sometimes that I was born so soon: it is impossible to imagine the height to which may be carried, in a thousand years, the power of man over matter; we may perhaps learn to deprive large masses of their gravity, and give them absolute levity for the sake of easy transport. Agriculture may diminish its labour and double its produce; all diseases may by sure means be prevented or cured (not excepting even that of old age), and our lives lengthened at pleasure even beyond the antediluvian standard. Oh! that moral science were in as fair a way of improvement; that men would cease to be wolves to one another; and that human beings would at length learn what they now improperly call humanity!
— Benjamin Franklin
Letter to Dr Priestley, 8 Feb 1780. In Memoirs of Benjamin Franklin (1845), Vol. 2, 152
I think a battery involves a chemical reaction, not merely storing charge.
It reads like Franklin believed true science would deliver utopia....well, we all have our faults.
John
Nope.
Ben, Ben, Ben. You blew it. Once. The fur gathers electrons, not the amber.
Franklin may have thought that “dry” silk was an insulator, based on experience with puny voltages encountered indoors in the 18th c. However, the enormous voltages found in lightning could drive current through silk with ease, I suspect. Insulation and conduction are relative terms.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/cell?db=luna
The first thing to break down would not be the silk, but the air. Franklin was still pretty lucky. The key was close enough to draw an arc to his knuckles when he reached out.
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