Authors: Bill Bryson
Promethean science matters because of the hopes it offers and the demands it places on disputable knowledge and puzzling threats. It still counts.
Promethean Science
is the title of a 2000 World Bank report on the promises of genetic engineering and biotechnology for global food crises. The authors apparently chose this striking phrase because it has come to mean
‘daringly original and creative
’.
53
However, that’s not all it means. Promethean science has a long and troubled history involving the many groups who claim the right to describe and intervene in the world. The same year as the World Bank report, the then head of Monsanto, Hendrik Verfaillie, spoke in Washington DC about the crisis surrounding genetically modified crops: ‘when we tried to explain the benefits, the science and the safety, we did not understand that our tone – our very
approach – was seen as arrogant. We were still in the “trust me” mode when the expectation was “show me”. And so, instead of happily ever after, this new technology became the focal point of public conflict, the benefits we saw were jeopardised, and Monsanto became a
lightning rod
.’
54
This is an appropriately highly charged image of the troubles of public trust in science.
1
John Hill,
A Review of the Works of the Royal Society,
2nd edition (London, Lady Hill, 1780), pp. 48–9.
2
Richard Stevens to Mr Brown, 20 December 1781, British Library MSS Add. 30094, fol. 204.
3
Charles Darwin to Thomas Huxley, 27 November 1859, in F. Burkhardt and S. Smith (eds),
Correspondence of Charles Darwin
(Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1985—), 7: 404; J.A. Secord, ‘Darwin and the breeders’ in David Kohn (ed.),
The Darwinian Heritage
(Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1985), 519–42, on p. 534.
4
Norfolk Chronicle
(28 July 1781), 3.
5
George Cadogan Morgan,
Lectures on Electricity,
2 vols (London, J. Johnson, 1794), 2: 248.
6
Norfolk Chronicle
(14 July 1781), 2.
7
John R. Millburn,
Benjamin Martin: Author, Instrument Maker and ‘Country Showman’
(Leiden, Noordhoff, 1976), p. 35.
8
[John Wolcot],
Peter’s Prophecy, or the President and the Poet, or, an Important Epistle to Sir J. Banks
(London, G. Kearsley, 1788), p. 12.
9
Russel McCormmach, ‘Henry Cavendish on the proper method of rectifying abuses’ in Elizabeth Garber (ed.),
Beyond History of Science
(Bethlehem, Pa., Lehigh University Press, 1990), 35–51, on p. 43.
10
Benjamin Wilson to Dixon Gamble, 28 January 1782, British Library MSS Add. 30094, fol. 212.
11
‘Proceedings relative to the accident by lightning at Heckingham’,
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society,
72 (1782), 355–78, on p. 377.
12
Morgan,
Lectures,
2: 234.
13
Daines Barrington to Benjamin Wilson, 26 December 1781, British Library MSS 30094, fol. 206.
14
George Cadogan Morgan to Samuel Cooper, 4 January 1782, Norfolk Record Office MSS C/GP 12/12, p. 221; Joseph Banks to Board of Ordnance, 29 December 1781, Public Record Office MSS WO 47/26 series II, fol. 515.
15
George Adams,
Lectures on Natural and Experimental Philosophy,
5 vols (London, Hindmarsh, 1794), 4: 370.
16
William Watson, ‘An account of a Treatise entituled
Letters concerning Electricity
by the Abbé Nollet’,
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society
48 (1753), 201–16, on p. 215.
17
George Parker, Earl of Macclesfield, ‘Speech awarding the Copley Medal’ (30 November 1753), in
Papers of Benjamin Franklin,
ed. L. Labaree et al. (New Haven, Yale University Press, 1959—), 5: 126–33.
18
John Mills,
An Essay on the Weather,
2nd edition (London, S. Hooper, 1773), p. 19.
19
Condorcet to Benjamin Franklin, 2 December 1773, in
Papers of Benjamin Franklin,
20: 489.
20
Jean Nollet,
Lettres sur l’éléctricité
(Paris, Guérin & Delatour, 1753), 1: 19.
21
Charles Burney,
The Present State of Music in Germany, the Netherlands and the United Provinces,
2 vols (London, Becket, 1775), 1:183.
22
Jessica Riskin, ‘The lawyer and the lightning rod’,
Science in Context,
12 (1999), 61–100, on p. 85.
23
Thomas Harmer to John Canton, 11 December 1753, in Royal Society Library MS/598, p. 28.
24
Gentleman’s Magazine
25 (1755), 312.
25
Benjamin Franklin, ‘Experiments supporting the use of pointed lightning rods’, August 1772, in
Papers of Benjamin Franklin,
19: 251. My emphasis.
26
Richard Price to Benjamin Franklin, 7 January 1782, in
Papers of Benjamin Franklin,
36: 406.
27
William Henly, ‘Experiments concerning the different efficacy of pointed and blunted rods, in securing buildings’,
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society
64 (1774), 133–52, on p. 141.
28
William Watson, ‘Observations upon the effects of lightning’,
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society,
54 (1764), 201–27, on p. 224.
29
Benjamin Wilson,
Further Observations upon Lightning
(London, Lockyer, Davis, 1774), p. 22.
30
Benjamin Wilson,
Observations upon Lightning
(London, Lockyer, Davis, 1773), p. 57.
31
S. Martin to Benjamin Wilson, 30 October 1775, British Library MSS Add. 30094, fol. 161.
32
Lord Harcourt to Benjamin Wilson, 12 August 1777, British Library MSS Add. 30094, fol. 179.
33
Daines Barrington to Benjamin Wilson, 25 September 1777, British Library MSS Add. 30094, fol.188.
34
Daines Barrington to Benjamin Wilson, 25 September 1777, British Library MSS 30094, fol. 188; Jean Hyacinthe de Magellan to Achille Lebègue de Presle (copy), 15 September and 3 October 1777, Library of Congress, Franklin MSS, at fol. 7v.
35
[Review of William Swift, ‘Account of some electrical experiments’],
Monthly Review,
60 (1779), 417; Trent A. Mitchell, ‘The politics of experiment in the eighteenth century: the pursuit of audience and the manipulation of consensus in the debate over lightning rods’,
Eighteenth-Century Studies,
31 (1998), 307–31, on p. 324.
36
Condorcet, ‘Éloge de M. Pringle’ (delivered 1782), published in
Oeuvres de Condorcet,
ed. A. Condorcet O’Connor and F. Arago, 12 vols (Paris, Firmin Didot, 1847), 2: 513–28, on p. 524; C.R. Weld,
History of the Royal Society with Memoirs of the Presidents,
2 vols (London, John Parker, 1848), 2: 101–2.
37
Benjamin Wilson to Dixon Gamble, 28 January 1782, British Library MSS Add. 30094, fol. 213.
38
Benjamin Wilson to Joseph Banks, 12 and 17 January 1782, British Library MSS Add. 30094, fols 208–10; Joseph Banks to Benjamin Wilson, January 1782, Royal Society MSS CB/6/104.
39
Royal Society MSS CB/6/105, fol. 1.
40
Edward Nairne to Jean Hyacinthe de Magellan, 5 March 1782, American Philosophical Society Library MSS BP 85, vol. 25, fol. 26.
41
Benjamin Wilson to Dixon Gamble, 28 January 1782, British Library MSS Add. 30094, fol. 213.
42
Jean Hyacinthe de Magellan to Benjamin Franklin, 13 April 1782, in
Papers of Benjamin Franklin,
37: 150.
43
C.B. Jewson,
The Jacobin City: A Portrait of Norwich in its Reaction to the French Revolution
(Glasgow, Blackie, 1975), p. 143.
44
Samuel Cooper to Henry Hammond, 17 October 1781, and to Joseph Banks, 13 January 1782, Royal Society Library MSS CB/1/3/82 and /83.
45
Gamble to Wilson, 24 March 1782, British Library MSS Add. 30094, fols. 219–20.
46
Charles Blagden,
Diary 1776–88,
Yale University Library MSS Osborn fc 16, entry for 26 January 1782.
47
Abraham Brook, ‘Account of a new electrometer’,
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society,
72 (1782), 384–8, on p. 387; Brook, ‘On thunder storms’, Royal Society Library MSS Letters and Papers, vol. 8 (1789), 129; Brook,
Miscellaneous Experiments and Remarks on Electricity, the Air Pump and the Barometer
(Norwich, Crouse and Stephenson, 1789), 101.
48
Morgan,
Lectures on Electricity,
1: xxix–xxxii.
49
Morgan,
Lectures on Electricity,
2: 298; [Obituary of George Cadogan Morgan],
Monthly Magazine,
6 (December, 1789), 475–80, on p. 476; D.O. Thomas, ‘George Cadogan Morgan’,
Price-Priestley Newsletter,
3 (1979), 53–70, on p. 65.
50
Adams,
Lectures,
4: 381–2.
51
Tal Golan,
Laws of Men and Laws of Nature: The History of Scientific Expert Testimony in England and America
(Cambridge, MA., Harvard University Press, 2004), p. 24.
52
Mary Wollstonecraft,
An Historical and Moral View of the Origin and Progress of the French Revolution; and the Effect it Has Produced in Europe
(London, J. Johnson, 1794), 17; Jane Goodall, ‘Electrical Romanticism’, in Jane Goodall and Christa Knellwolf (eds),
Frankenstein’s Science: Experimentation and Discovery in Romantic Culture 1780–1830
(Aldershot, Ashgate, 2008), 117–32 on p. 125.
53
Ismail Seragildin and G.J. Persley,
Promethean Science: Agricultural Biotechnology, the Environment and the Poor
(Washington DC, Consultative Group on International Agricultural Science, 2000), v. Stress in the original.
54
Hendrik A. Verfaillie, ‘A new pledge for a new company’, Farm Journal Conference, Washington DC, 27 November 2000, online at www.monsanto.com/monsanto/media/speeches/new_pledge_speech.html.
Richard Holmes, biographer and travel writer, is a Fellow of the British Academy and author of celebrated works on Shelley, Coleridge and young Dr Johnson. His latest book,
The Age of Wonder,
is an examination of the life and work of the scientists of the Romantic age who laid the foundations of modern science. It was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize, and won the 2009 Royal Society Prize for Science Books.
N
EWTON’S THEORIES IMPRESSED THE INTELLECTUALS, BUT THE MASS APPEAL OF BALLOONING REALLY SPREAD THE IDEA THAT A NEW AGE WAS DAWNING
. T
HE
R
OYAL
S
OCIETY MAINTAINED A PROPER SCIENTIFIC SCEPTICISM. BUT AS
R
ICHARD
H
OLMES REVEALS, ITS
P
RESIDENT WAS A GOOD DEAL MORE INTRIGUED THAN HE LET ON IN PUBLIC.
On 6 November 1783, the recently elected President of the Royal Society, the botanist Joseph Banks, called a special meeting of the Fellows at their splendid new premises in Somerset House. The subject up for discussion was a controversial one: the extraordinary phenomenon of the French ‘aerostatique Machines’.
Banks had received two long and confidential ‘papers’ from Benjamin Franklin, the American Ambassador in Paris, describing the experiments of the Montgolfier brothers with hot-air balloons; and of Dr Alexander Charles with hydrogen balloons. Franklin prophesied – correctly – that the first manned flight in history was about to occur. A balloon would inevitably ‘carry up a Man’. Pilâtre de Rozier and the Marquis d’Arlandes duly took to the air on 19 November 1783. So what, Franklin wondered mildly, did the British intend to do about it all?
After the meeting, Banks wrote back thanking Franklin for his ‘Philosophical amusements’, but playing down any notion of Anglo-French competition in balloon technology. Instead he sounded a note of ironic caution. ‘I think I see an inclination in the more respectable parts of the Royal Society to guard against the
Ballomania
which has prevailed, and not to patronise Balloons merely on account of their rising in the Atmosphere, till some Experiment likely to prove beneficial either to Society or Science, is proposed to be an next to them.’ Banks’s witty coinage – ‘ballomania’ – was destined to float quite as far as the balloons themselves.
It is usually said that the Royal Society subsequently – and wisely – made little attempt to sponsor, fund or even foster rival British balloon experiments. Its Fellows were gently discouraged by Banks, who continued to dismiss ‘ballomania’ as a typically French craze for novelty and display. It was a passing fashion that could have no scientific outcome. Like the exactly contemporary French craze for Mesmerism (also reported by
Franklin), it would soon dissipate and be utterly forgotten.
Certainly, all the early balloon ascents made in England in the following months, unlike those in France, were privately funded through commercial exhibitions or subscriptions. There was no official sponsorship from the Society or the Crown, or from any university or public institution – unless one counts the glamorous Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire as a public institution. Moreover nearly all the successful British ascents were in fact made by foreign aeronauts and showmen, such as the young Neapolitan Vincenzo Lunardi, the Italian Count Francesco Zambeccari, the Frenchman Jean-Pierre Blanchard and the American Dr John Jeffries.
Banks’ views appeared to express a mixture of sensible scientific scepticism, combined with a somewhat aloof disapproval of French excitability. Patriotically, he always insisted that the science of ballooning had been originated by the British, in the ‘inflammable air’ experiments of Henry Cavendish, Joseph Black and Joseph Priestley. Only the French, he joked, would have turned Cavendish’s elegant soap bubbles of hydrogen into the seventy-foot monster of ‘Montgolfier’s flying Medusa’ (appropriately powered by hot or ‘rarefied’ French air).