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Benjamin Franklin and Twentieth Century Science
Journal of The Franklin Institute DEVOTED TO SCIFaNCE AND THE MECHANIC
ARTS
December 1965
Volume 280, Number 6
Benjamin Franklin and Twentieth Century Science* by
FREDERICK
SEITZ
President, National Acadxxny of Sciences Washington, D. C. Under somewhat different circumstances it would have been a pleasure to take this opportunity to review the advances and prospects in the field of solid state science, which was the center of my attention for so many years. I did, however, have an opportunity to do this in Philadelphia last May in connection with a large society meeting. Moreover, I feel it would be more appropriate to devote the present occasion to matters that relate to Benjamin Franklin, some two centuries after his enormously dynamic influence began to be felt on our country. Let me emphasize at the outset that I am not so foolish as to believe that in approaching the implications of Franklin’s life in our country I can hope to compete with those honorable citizens of the Philadelphia community who have devoted so much of their time and thoughts to him and the era in which he lived. After all, I have had the privilege of living in Philadelphia and its vicinity for only seven years, and in the State of Pennsylvania for a mere eleven. Moreover, I will not claim that I can throw any new light on Franklin’s philosophical outlook. Rather, I would like to take this occasion to review some of the developments in our country in the intervening period along the lines that his own thoughts and actions bring to mind. *Address delivered at the Medal Day Meeting of The Franklin Institute, October 20, 1965, in acceptance of The Franklin Medal for 1965.
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Franklin was, of course, the first great man of thought and action in the colonies to grasp the sense of destiny of our land. Moreover, he had the highly unusual gift of articulating his ideas in everyday language and of translating them into action once his convictions were crystallized. Inasmuch as both Washington and Jefferson were considerably his juniors, there is little doubt that Franklin had a substantial influence in creating the atmosphere in which both men reached their decisions related to the independence of the colonies. Jefferson was still a very young man when he wrote the Declaration of Independence during those crucial days in the spring and summer of 1776. Franklin’s influence on him must have been far from trivial, even though Jefferson’s own gifts and soul are clearly exhibited in the Declaration. What is particularly relevant for the present meeting is that one of Franklin’s many abilities was to reason in the manner of a man of science, which he indeed was, even though a host of circumstances made him primarily a man of public matters-printer, publisher, business man, inventor, public officer, economist, demographer, and diplomat. For this reason, many of his ideas, including his public statements, are cast in molds easy for the scientist to recognize. It is an interesting fact that during the Nineteenth Century most of the men in our country with anything like Franklin’s capacity for creative work in the fields of science and invention, such as Joseph Henry, Henry Rowland, or Thomas Edison, stayed relatively close to science or technology. It is only in this century, with the opportunities that have developed for the scientist and engineer to play a role at the governmental level in ways symbolized by the activities of Herbert Hoover, Karl Compton, James Conant, Vannevar Bush, and Detlev Bronk, that we find some significant traces of the qualities exhibited by Franklin appearing on our scene once again. It seems fairly safe to speculate upon the path of Franklin’s career had he been born in 1906 instead of 1706. Assuming that our society offered him opportunities comparable in the terms of reference of our day to those which it offered to him in colonial days, as an undergraduate he would have been in student activities on some major campus during the mid-20’s and, having the capacity for science, would presumably have majored in physics which was in an exceedingly exciting state at that time. That would have led him into a brilliant research career as a young man, probably in a university, since he had a knack for teaching and an interest in it. On the other hand, events undoubtedly would eventually have brought him close to public responsibilities and into Washington circles, where his unique gifts would soon have had their effect. His deep involvement in government-sponsored activities during World War II would have, at a minimum, guaranteed that the doors in Washington would have been open to him sooner or later. Incidentally, we might in passing speculate on Franklin’s career had he been born in 1806 and been a contemporary of Joseph Henry. I doubt if he would have had the patience to follow Henry’s footsteps and become a fulltime professional physicist. He lacked the Calvinist upbringing to cast aside
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the interest in worldly affairs which a full-time interest in science would have required in those bleak days for our scientific colleagues. It seems safe to say that had he been born in 1806 he yould have had a career much like that we know, the Civil War replacing the War of Independence in relation to his public activities in later life. Let me now review some of the main facets of Franklin’s career and attributes, taking time in each case to review the implications of these qualities for our own day. Printer
Franklin was first of all a printer and publisher; indeed, one of very broad scope and capacity, with a deep interest not only in the technology and art of printing, but also in the power of the printed word to shape the mind and spirit of Man. In fact, it was his own desire that his epitaph be, “Benjamin Franklin I am reminded in this connection that Derek Price has suggested -Printer.” that the invention of printing in Western Europe early in the 1400’s may well have been the critical factor which gave Western science that great thrust which has made its effect on the evolution of our society so very different from the effects on earlier societies, such as the Greek, Roman, Byzantine, or Arabic, which had some of the ingredients of what we now term science. The situation is probably quite complex, for the Chinese failed to initiate the scientific revolution in spite of the invention of printing at a relatively early date in their own cultural development. In other words, a variety of favorable factors were at work in the period before Stevin and Galileo. Nevertheless, we can hardly imagine science emerging to its present stage of influence in our society had it not been for the broad and rapid exchange of ideas made possible through the printing press. It is hardly imaginable that Franklin would have started his career as a printer and publisher in our own century, since the business of publishing has come so much farther along. It requires no great imagination to realize, however, that he would have been one of those scientists with a deep and imaginative interest in all aspects of scientific publishing. The North
American
Franklin was a dedicated American in the widest sense possible in his day. An unusual set of circumstances made him a New Englander by birth and upbringing, but a Philadelphian by adoption. Happy chance permitted him to spend a year and a half in England under very favorable circumstances at the age of nineteen. These diverse experiences at an early age permitted him to overcome much of the provincialism which must have plagued those colonial citizens who were not ocean voyagers because of the abominable state of transportation. Actually, as with all of us, he never completely escaped regionalism. His correspondence indicates that he looked upon himself as a
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New Englander until his death. He enjoyed the almost purely Anglo-Saxon origins and traditions of New England and, in his more private writings, was somewhat dubious of the dilution of the Philadelphia community by the Palatinate Germans who came to our shores as impoverished refugees from the Thirty-Years War and its aftermath. Born in the very middle of the colonial period, Franklin’s Americanism initially embodied the deepest possible loyalty to Britain. Unlike many others who played a role in the Revolution, he abandoned that loyalty very slowly and reluctantly, and only when incident after incident convinced him, in spite of his emotional armor, that the promises of the Anglo-Saxon’s destiny on this side of the Atlantic would be sadly muted if the colonies did not achieve independence. He was first of all shocked by Braddock’s arrogant attitude toward the colonists as well as by his incompetence in frontier warfare during the French and Indian War in the 1750’s. He was angered and frustrated by the Stamp Tax, by the unwillingness of the Penn family to treat the representatives of the Pennsylvania community as more than menial servants when he approached them as a spokesman for the colony, and finally by the unwillingness of the English government to contemplate having representatives from the colonies in Parliament. Franklin’s Americanism would have taken quite a different form in this century. It seems clear that by nature he would have taken a deep interest in the matter of civil rights and the evolution of patterns which would assure equal opportunities to all of our citizens. Diplomat
and Public
Servant
Our greatest national debt to Franklin undoubtedly arises from the scope and quality of his public service, all under guidance of the principle that he would “never ask, never refuse, and never resign” public office. Quite apart from considering his magnificent role as a major participant in events leading to the Declaration of Independence and his skillful diplomacy during the years in Paris when he kept French support flowing to the embattled colonies, one cannot help but be impressed by the extent to which he struggled to achieve unity of thought and purpose among the diverse groups of which the colonies were composed. He worked unsparingly to bring men’s minds together rather than to pit them against one another. He was quite willing to have others appear as the father of his own thoughts, if harmony and unity were thereby achieved. The acceptance of the principle that one should automatically search for unity in group enterprises must be regarded as one of our most valuable national traditions--one we may be almost unconscious of unless circumstances throw us together with groups which have quite different traditions. Having participated in countless governmental or quasi-governmental com-
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mittees during and after the war, it came as somewhat of a shock to me when working with Europeans in a comparable degree of intimacy to realize that their traditions in this respect are essentially different from our own. These differences do not stem merely from the diversity of languages in Europe, but rather I believe from endemic differences in outlook produced by elementary education. Our own emphasis on “togetherness” in the highly formative years of primary and secondary school education should not be underestimated. This emphasis may indeed be one of our most valuable customs. Serving now as president of an organization which maintains some four hundred advisory committees at work in the public interest, I find it a continuing miracle that in virtually all these studies the participants begin with the assumption that in working toward their goal they will search out the common ground on which the broadest possible agreement can be reached. This is not to say that the noise accompanying the discussion in these committees cannot reach high levels; however, it is rare not to find such dissonance ultimately resolved, once conflicting views have been exchanged. I fully realize that the evolution of this tradition required for more than the example and blessing of Benjamin Franklin. It was, however, a tradition which came very naturally to him, and we can be exceedingly grateful for that. There have, of course, been notable periods in our national history when the principle that we should strive for a common viewpoint was lost, and we suffered heavily as a result. The events surrounding the Civil War provide the most prominent example ; the issue of civil rights in our own day makes us conscious that the perils of dissension are always close at hand. Returning to matters more closely related to science, I must confess that I view with great concern the growing tendency in our country of regional groups of scientists to adopt mutually antagonistic views in seeking Federal funds for research, almost as though our land were composed of competing nations. Should this process of “Balkanization” continue to grow, it would clearly hinder the development of science in our country. We have great need for Franklin’s breadth of spirit to help weld our national scientific community into a single whole. This topic is so important to our national welfare that it merits far more time than I can devote to it here. I would like to say, however, that I am inclined to believe at present that the tempering spirit of moderation probably must be cultivated in an explicitly conscious way here in the Eastern Seaboard in the regions which represented Franklin’s world. For this region, extending from Baltimore to Boston, still provides by both tradition and example, much of the guidance for the remainder of the country on matters related to national policy. If selfish regionalism were to become dominant in this area, as it well could in the striving of local groups to obtain as much Government money
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Frederick Xeitz as possible, the prospects for our country as a whole would become very bleak indeed. Demographer
In assessing the potentialities of our land in terms of the demographic trends of his day, Franklin was remarkably perceptive. In fact, his scientific mind was never more clearly at work at the social level than in this field. He noted with much interest that, in his day, the population of the colonies was doubling about every 20 years as a result of immigration and the high birth rate. This rate of growth was taking place on a base population of about one million in 1750. Aware there was little that could impede the rate of growth of the colonies in the foreseeable future, save some form of imposed strangulation, he realized that in a century or so the population of the English c’olonies would be comparable to that of the British Isles, which were growing at a substantially smaller rate. Moreover, he saw that in still another century the population in English America could grow to be much larger than that of the British Isles if the colonists were given the full freedom for westward expansion which their unique position permitted. Such basic demographic reasoning somewhat similar at its core to the type of reasoning which led Malthus nearly a half-century later to his own pessimistic conclusions concerning world population, and which haunt us very much these days, provided the basis for many of Franklin’s most persuasive arguments concerning the pattern of growth which the British Government should permit to prevail in the colonies. He tried his best to convince the leaders in England that the future of the English people on our planet would be best assured if the colonies were explicitly treated as extensions of the counties of the British Isles, the colonists being granted all the rights exercised by those living in England, including representation in Parliament. He wanted the import of slaves and the dumping of the most vicious prisoners from English jails stopped. He wanted every conceivable step taken, including the termination of French expansion in the upper Mississippi region, which would favor the growth of the Anglo-Saxon community in North America. Although the most important of his arguments did not prevail in London, his reasoning was of course unimpeachable. Now, two centuries later, we stand at the outer boundary of the sphere to which his extraordinary vision permitted him to see. Our population has grown to nearly four times that of the British Isles and has decreased its doubling rate by only a factor of two since Franklin’s day. It is true that the fractional component of our gene pool derived from Anglo-Saxon sources has been diluted by a factor of about two from sources which Franklin in his day would have frowned upon as representing the lesser breeds, but I doubt, were he living today and familiar with the important role that this diversity has played in
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B. Franklin and Twentieth Century Science the evolution of our country as an actor on the world stage, that he would have felt entirely unhappy about the outcome. In his day, of course, Franklin had no reason to worry about the matter of population growth from the viewpoint with which we are concerned today, both here and abroad. It is a simple fact, however, that if our own population continues to grow at its present percental rate, the tyranny of geometrical progression which Franklin understood so well, assures us that we shall have nearly a billion souls in our land a century from now. If the population of the planet is extrapolated in a similar way, we will have something approaching twenty-five billion human beings on the globe. I shall let you speculate on what Franklin may have thought of this. In Franklin’s day, the American Indian was a significant factor in the social scene of the colonies. Franklin, like Jefferson, had a deep admiration for the red man ; he remarked late in his life that most of the conflict between the colonists and the Indians could be blamed on the fact that the white man was less true to his word than the Indian. It is clear that Franklin thought that the Indian would remain a major figure in our country for the indefinite future, inasmuch as the white and Indian populations of the continent were still comparable. Franklin apparently thought that the settler and Indians would eventually learn to accommodate to one another. He did not foresee that our own inhumanity would be so gross that the Indian would be virtually extinguished, even though willing to attempt to adjust to the presence of the white man. Franklin’s spirit of compassion and justice, coupled with an appreciation of human values among those of a different colored skin and culture, would undoubtedly have made him highly sensitive to the complex international problems associated with the collapse of colonialism in Asia and Africa and the rise of new nations under the leadership of the yellow, brown, and black peoples of the world. Economist
The well-known views on economics which Franklin expressed almost interminably in one way or another in Poor Richard’s Almanac pre-date Adam Smith’s Treatise on the Wealth of Nations by several decades and would seem to class Franklin in a much more conservative mold than Smith. In fact, the inherent attitudes of Poor Richard are common currency among the more reactionary members of the Senate and House whenever bills involving appropriations to states or districts other than their own are being discussed. We strongly suspect, however, that Franklin was at heart a much more bold and flexible economist than he ever allowed Poor Richard to be. For one thing, he recognized very early in his business career that trade within the colonies was hampered by the lack of adequate sources of silver, copper, and gold for coinage. As a result, he strongly supported the adoption of paper money in place of metal coinage. It is reasonable to suppose that, like Smith,
Vd
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Frederick Seita he regarded productive human labor as the root of wealth, and was prepared to endorse any action, economic or otherwise, which would serve as a catalyst for fruitful work. Had he lived during the great depression of the 1930’s, he probably would have been pleased to join the “Brain Trust” either as a scientist, economist, or sociologist in attempting to make the wheels of industry turn faster and more effectively. The problems of the gold drain and the crisis in the availability of metallic currency in these days of the automatic vending machine and the affluent numismatist would have challenged him greatly. We cannot help but marvel at the confidence he expressed in the long-range stability of our country’s economy when we read of the bequests to the cities of Boston and Philadelphia. In both cases he was prepared to allow the money to be put at interest at five per cent for 200 years before being wholly used for the philanthropic work which was his ultimate goal. He apparently had great confidence that the return on normal investments would outrun inflation for many decades. In any case The Franklin Institute has benefitted from his farsighted gift to this city. There is one respect in which he was understandably short-sighted in relation to money. As the Ambassador of our Revolutionary Government in France he was quite willing to use his personal fortune to cover a large part of the expenses needed to represent his o&e adequately in the diplomatic atmosphere of Paris. He thereby helped to establish a tradition which has made it difficult for any but wealthy men to hold the key ambassadorial posts, at least in countries where the representational aspects are important. The same principle regarding the underpayment of public officers all but pauperized Jefferson during and after his years of major public service. In this sense the philosophy of Poor Richard, applied to the higher levels of Federal employment, have haunted our land for over two centuries. I must admit, incidentally, that I am deeply intrigued by the thousand bottles of vintage wines Franklin kept on rotation in his Paris wine cellar. This aspect of Franklin’s household clearly was not under Poor Richard’s surveillance. Scientist
Finally, let me turn to Franklin the scientist. We clearly owe him an enormous debt on several scores. He demonstrated beyond any doubt that the spirit of European science could take root on this side of the Atlantic and that we have the capacity to foster scientific greatness. Moreover, in founding the American Philosophical Society, only 84 years after the founding of the Royal Society of London, Franklin did his level best to help science grow on an enduring basis by giving it a focus in the national community. Granting that Franklin’s interest in science was both deep and sincere, and that he was respected as a scientist at home as well as abroad, we may
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reasonably ask why approximately two centuries passed before our full potentialities in creative science were realized. Why were our gross contributions to basic research not on a par with those of European nations of comparable population a century ago? Why was it necessary for Joseph Henry, who served as the second president of the National Academy of Sciences between 1868 and 1878, to struggle so desperately to gain recognition for what he termed “scholarship” in science? Why, in his 1884 address to the American Association for the Advancement of Science, was it necessary for Henry Rowland to lament the profusion of weeds rather than of grain in the fields of American science? Why was it necessary for the core of Gibbs’ great work, toward the end of the last century, to be appreciated first in Europe? Clearly, no single person, least of all Franklin, can be blamed for this long, long dark age in which our national potentiality for producing good science u-as so far ahead of our productivity that we were dependent almost entirely on European science for much of the scientific basis of technology as well as for advanced education in science in its more sophisticated aspects. Yet the symptoms of the ailment can be clearly discerned in Franklin’s words and attitudes, which obviously reflected those of his compatriots in the colonies. We note the words “useful knowledge” appear in the statement of purpose of the Philosophical Society. We note that Franklin was at least as much pleased that his work on atmospheric electricity led to the invention of the lightning rod as he was with it as a source of human enlightenment. In brief, even Franklin’s faith in science seems to have been weakened by one of our greatest national obsessions, namely that knowledge must be demonstrably useful before it can be given a position of value in our scheme of things. Once this view is accepted it is easy to take that one final step and insist that support be given only to generate those species of scientific knowledge which were proven useful beforehand. This attitude has been the nemesis of American science for 290 years. As a nation we became genuinely mature in the scientific sense only when the National Science Foundation was created in 1950. It is the only Federal agency supporting scientific research on a significantly large scale which is not tied to a specific applied mission. Let me dwell on the principles involved here in more detail since so much is at stake not only for us professionally but for the nation itself. If we examine the reasons European science was able to effect the enormous technological revolution we are now witnessing, it becomes clear that three major interlocking principles or realizations are involved. These principles were evolved by a number of minds between the time of the Crusades when the great Greek manuscripts first came to the hands of the European scholars, and the days of Bacon, Galileo, and Descartes when the significance of the Novum Organum was finally appreciated. The principles are as follows :
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First, we Ie&n about nature only by studying nature. No limiting orthodoxy or dogma must be interposed between the mind of man and nature. Moreover, speculation must be tempered and tested by experiment. This principle was never fully appreciated by the Greek scientists, who were often inclined to let speculation outpace detailed observation. This inhibited them from developing sophisticated instrumentation and kept them from the great discoveries in science which characterized one major aspect of the European Renaissance. Second, knowledge of nature, or what we now call science, contains within it the means for bringing about a vast revolution in technology which can not only remove much of the routine drudgery of life from the back of man but can also open completely new opportunities for him. This principle was also missed by the Greeks who, as far as we can tell, had little interest in the applications of science as a means of easing the routine labor of man. Had they appreciated or valued this principle, it is quite possible that the modern age of science-based technology would have emerged nearly two thousand years earlier. Most important for our discussion here is the final principle that a substantial part of the material support for science must be devoted to the extension of science on the basis of decisions determined by analyzing the body of growing knowledge itself, rather than by any possible application, regardless of how high an evaluation we place upon the applications. Paradoxically, science develops most effectively and proves most useful if a significant fraction of its support is provided without regard to an immediate applied mission. Had the western Europeans, with their high standards of scholarship, not placed great value on the systematic development of science for its own sake, many of the most revolutionary practical innovations arising from it, in fields such as communications, nuclear energy, and antibiotics, would never have been conceived. With the acceptance of these principles there must also be a conscious desire to establish institutions adequate to the task of carrying through scientific research. It was a happy discovery, during the Industrial Revolution in the German states a century and a half ago, when it was found that higher education in science and research could be combined so effectively in the university. We wonder if this highly productive wedding between teaching and research will continue for another 150 years as gigantism becomes more pronounced, and indeed essential, in many aspects of research programs. Our country readily accepted the first two of the three principles stated above, namely, the importance of learning from nature without interposing arbitrary prejudice, and of anticipating great gifts from science to technology. Franklin’s work and accomplishments show that the early Americans were anxious to enter into a more fruitful association with nature through technology. It is amply clear, however, that there was unwillingness to devote a
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very significant part of our resources to the establishment of institutions where science could be exploited for its own sake in anything resembling the European tradition. This fact is very easy to explain in the light of circumstances in Franklin’s day. The colonists lived in the shadow of an enormous wilderness and were of necessity far more interested in gaining rudimentary mastery of that wilderness than in the evolution of a self-sufficient and sophisticated technology at that stage of the social and economic development of the colonies. Generally speaking, they were compelled to be users rather than conservers or extenders of resources of all kinds. What is remarkable, however, is that the attitude prevalent in Franklin’s day persisted so strongly at the national level a century later in the 1850’s when our national industrial potentialities finally began to loom significantly on the international scene. It is true the Smithsonian Institution and the National Academy were created about a century after the Philosophical Society. The Smithsonian, however, was endowed by an English chemist who had never visited the United States and was apparently inspired by the concepts of its relatively classless society and the promise which science could offer that society. The Academy, in turn, was created during the Civil War with the explicit thought that it would provide the Government with expert practical advice in science and engineering when needed for specific goals. Fortunately for our nation, inspired private philanthropy and an inherently strong educational system, combining both public and private institutions, sustained good science at least near a bare subsistence level until Federal responsibility awoke to the needs and challenges of science within our borders within the last 25 years. Let us hope that we have the wisdom as a nation to maintain the present pace until it has gained acceptance as a genuinely national tradition. If Franklin were with us today, I think it is safe to assume that in his great and broad wisdom, he would be one of the champions for the Federal support of good science.
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ARTS
December 1965
Volume 280, Number 6
Benjamin Franklin and Twentieth Century Science* by
FREDERICK
SEITZ
President, National Acadxxny of Sciences Washington, D. C. Under somewhat different circumstances it would have been a pleasure to take this opportunity to review the advances and prospects in the field of solid state science, which was the center of my attention for so many years. I did, however, have an opportunity to do this in Philadelphia last May in connection with a large society meeting. Moreover, I feel it would be more appropriate to devote the present occasion to matters that relate to Benjamin Franklin, some two centuries after his enormously dynamic influence began to be felt on our country. Let me emphasize at the outset that I am not so foolish as to believe that in approaching the implications of Franklin’s life in our country I can hope to compete with those honorable citizens of the Philadelphia community who have devoted so much of their time and thoughts to him and the era in which he lived. After all, I have had the privilege of living in Philadelphia and its vicinity for only seven years, and in the State of Pennsylvania for a mere eleven. Moreover, I will not claim that I can throw any new light on Franklin’s philosophical outlook. Rather, I would like to take this occasion to review some of the developments in our country in the intervening period along the lines that his own thoughts and actions bring to mind. *Address delivered at the Medal Day Meeting of The Franklin Institute, October 20, 1965, in acceptance of The Franklin Medal for 1965.
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Franklin was, of course, the first great man of thought and action in the colonies to grasp the sense of destiny of our land. Moreover, he had the highly unusual gift of articulating his ideas in everyday language and of translating them into action once his convictions were crystallized. Inasmuch as both Washington and Jefferson were considerably his juniors, there is little doubt that Franklin had a substantial influence in creating the atmosphere in which both men reached their decisions related to the independence of the colonies. Jefferson was still a very young man when he wrote the Declaration of Independence during those crucial days in the spring and summer of 1776. Franklin’s influence on him must have been far from trivial, even though Jefferson’s own gifts and soul are clearly exhibited in the Declaration. What is particularly relevant for the present meeting is that one of Franklin’s many abilities was to reason in the manner of a man of science, which he indeed was, even though a host of circumstances made him primarily a man of public matters-printer, publisher, business man, inventor, public officer, economist, demographer, and diplomat. For this reason, many of his ideas, including his public statements, are cast in molds easy for the scientist to recognize. It is an interesting fact that during the Nineteenth Century most of the men in our country with anything like Franklin’s capacity for creative work in the fields of science and invention, such as Joseph Henry, Henry Rowland, or Thomas Edison, stayed relatively close to science or technology. It is only in this century, with the opportunities that have developed for the scientist and engineer to play a role at the governmental level in ways symbolized by the activities of Herbert Hoover, Karl Compton, James Conant, Vannevar Bush, and Detlev Bronk, that we find some significant traces of the qualities exhibited by Franklin appearing on our scene once again. It seems fairly safe to speculate upon the path of Franklin’s career had he been born in 1906 instead of 1706. Assuming that our society offered him opportunities comparable in the terms of reference of our day to those which it offered to him in colonial days, as an undergraduate he would have been in student activities on some major campus during the mid-20’s and, having the capacity for science, would presumably have majored in physics which was in an exceedingly exciting state at that time. That would have led him into a brilliant research career as a young man, probably in a university, since he had a knack for teaching and an interest in it. On the other hand, events undoubtedly would eventually have brought him close to public responsibilities and into Washington circles, where his unique gifts would soon have had their effect. His deep involvement in government-sponsored activities during World War II would have, at a minimum, guaranteed that the doors in Washington would have been open to him sooner or later. Incidentally, we might in passing speculate on Franklin’s career had he been born in 1806 and been a contemporary of Joseph Henry. I doubt if he would have had the patience to follow Henry’s footsteps and become a fulltime professional physicist. He lacked the Calvinist upbringing to cast aside
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the interest in worldly affairs which a full-time interest in science would have required in those bleak days for our scientific colleagues. It seems safe to say that had he been born in 1806 he yould have had a career much like that we know, the Civil War replacing the War of Independence in relation to his public activities in later life. Let me now review some of the main facets of Franklin’s career and attributes, taking time in each case to review the implications of these qualities for our own day. Printer
Franklin was first of all a printer and publisher; indeed, one of very broad scope and capacity, with a deep interest not only in the technology and art of printing, but also in the power of the printed word to shape the mind and spirit of Man. In fact, it was his own desire that his epitaph be, “Benjamin Franklin I am reminded in this connection that Derek Price has suggested -Printer.” that the invention of printing in Western Europe early in the 1400’s may well have been the critical factor which gave Western science that great thrust which has made its effect on the evolution of our society so very different from the effects on earlier societies, such as the Greek, Roman, Byzantine, or Arabic, which had some of the ingredients of what we now term science. The situation is probably quite complex, for the Chinese failed to initiate the scientific revolution in spite of the invention of printing at a relatively early date in their own cultural development. In other words, a variety of favorable factors were at work in the period before Stevin and Galileo. Nevertheless, we can hardly imagine science emerging to its present stage of influence in our society had it not been for the broad and rapid exchange of ideas made possible through the printing press. It is hardly imaginable that Franklin would have started his career as a printer and publisher in our own century, since the business of publishing has come so much farther along. It requires no great imagination to realize, however, that he would have been one of those scientists with a deep and imaginative interest in all aspects of scientific publishing. The North
American
Franklin was a dedicated American in the widest sense possible in his day. An unusual set of circumstances made him a New Englander by birth and upbringing, but a Philadelphian by adoption. Happy chance permitted him to spend a year and a half in England under very favorable circumstances at the age of nineteen. These diverse experiences at an early age permitted him to overcome much of the provincialism which must have plagued those colonial citizens who were not ocean voyagers because of the abominable state of transportation. Actually, as with all of us, he never completely escaped regionalism. His correspondence indicates that he looked upon himself as a
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New Englander until his death. He enjoyed the almost purely Anglo-Saxon origins and traditions of New England and, in his more private writings, was somewhat dubious of the dilution of the Philadelphia community by the Palatinate Germans who came to our shores as impoverished refugees from the Thirty-Years War and its aftermath. Born in the very middle of the colonial period, Franklin’s Americanism initially embodied the deepest possible loyalty to Britain. Unlike many others who played a role in the Revolution, he abandoned that loyalty very slowly and reluctantly, and only when incident after incident convinced him, in spite of his emotional armor, that the promises of the Anglo-Saxon’s destiny on this side of the Atlantic would be sadly muted if the colonies did not achieve independence. He was first of all shocked by Braddock’s arrogant attitude toward the colonists as well as by his incompetence in frontier warfare during the French and Indian War in the 1750’s. He was angered and frustrated by the Stamp Tax, by the unwillingness of the Penn family to treat the representatives of the Pennsylvania community as more than menial servants when he approached them as a spokesman for the colony, and finally by the unwillingness of the English government to contemplate having representatives from the colonies in Parliament. Franklin’s Americanism would have taken quite a different form in this century. It seems clear that by nature he would have taken a deep interest in the matter of civil rights and the evolution of patterns which would assure equal opportunities to all of our citizens. Diplomat
and Public
Servant
Our greatest national debt to Franklin undoubtedly arises from the scope and quality of his public service, all under guidance of the principle that he would “never ask, never refuse, and never resign” public office. Quite apart from considering his magnificent role as a major participant in events leading to the Declaration of Independence and his skillful diplomacy during the years in Paris when he kept French support flowing to the embattled colonies, one cannot help but be impressed by the extent to which he struggled to achieve unity of thought and purpose among the diverse groups of which the colonies were composed. He worked unsparingly to bring men’s minds together rather than to pit them against one another. He was quite willing to have others appear as the father of his own thoughts, if harmony and unity were thereby achieved. The acceptance of the principle that one should automatically search for unity in group enterprises must be regarded as one of our most valuable national traditions--one we may be almost unconscious of unless circumstances throw us together with groups which have quite different traditions. Having participated in countless governmental or quasi-governmental com-
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mittees during and after the war, it came as somewhat of a shock to me when working with Europeans in a comparable degree of intimacy to realize that their traditions in this respect are essentially different from our own. These differences do not stem merely from the diversity of languages in Europe, but rather I believe from endemic differences in outlook produced by elementary education. Our own emphasis on “togetherness” in the highly formative years of primary and secondary school education should not be underestimated. This emphasis may indeed be one of our most valuable customs. Serving now as president of an organization which maintains some four hundred advisory committees at work in the public interest, I find it a continuing miracle that in virtually all these studies the participants begin with the assumption that in working toward their goal they will search out the common ground on which the broadest possible agreement can be reached. This is not to say that the noise accompanying the discussion in these committees cannot reach high levels; however, it is rare not to find such dissonance ultimately resolved, once conflicting views have been exchanged. I fully realize that the evolution of this tradition required for more than the example and blessing of Benjamin Franklin. It was, however, a tradition which came very naturally to him, and we can be exceedingly grateful for that. There have, of course, been notable periods in our national history when the principle that we should strive for a common viewpoint was lost, and we suffered heavily as a result. The events surrounding the Civil War provide the most prominent example ; the issue of civil rights in our own day makes us conscious that the perils of dissension are always close at hand. Returning to matters more closely related to science, I must confess that I view with great concern the growing tendency in our country of regional groups of scientists to adopt mutually antagonistic views in seeking Federal funds for research, almost as though our land were composed of competing nations. Should this process of “Balkanization” continue to grow, it would clearly hinder the development of science in our country. We have great need for Franklin’s breadth of spirit to help weld our national scientific community into a single whole. This topic is so important to our national welfare that it merits far more time than I can devote to it here. I would like to say, however, that I am inclined to believe at present that the tempering spirit of moderation probably must be cultivated in an explicitly conscious way here in the Eastern Seaboard in the regions which represented Franklin’s world. For this region, extending from Baltimore to Boston, still provides by both tradition and example, much of the guidance for the remainder of the country on matters related to national policy. If selfish regionalism were to become dominant in this area, as it well could in the striving of local groups to obtain as much Government money
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Frederick Xeitz as possible, the prospects for our country as a whole would become very bleak indeed. Demographer
In assessing the potentialities of our land in terms of the demographic trends of his day, Franklin was remarkably perceptive. In fact, his scientific mind was never more clearly at work at the social level than in this field. He noted with much interest that, in his day, the population of the colonies was doubling about every 20 years as a result of immigration and the high birth rate. This rate of growth was taking place on a base population of about one million in 1750. Aware there was little that could impede the rate of growth of the colonies in the foreseeable future, save some form of imposed strangulation, he realized that in a century or so the population of the English c’olonies would be comparable to that of the British Isles, which were growing at a substantially smaller rate. Moreover, he saw that in still another century the population in English America could grow to be much larger than that of the British Isles if the colonists were given the full freedom for westward expansion which their unique position permitted. Such basic demographic reasoning somewhat similar at its core to the type of reasoning which led Malthus nearly a half-century later to his own pessimistic conclusions concerning world population, and which haunt us very much these days, provided the basis for many of Franklin’s most persuasive arguments concerning the pattern of growth which the British Government should permit to prevail in the colonies. He tried his best to convince the leaders in England that the future of the English people on our planet would be best assured if the colonies were explicitly treated as extensions of the counties of the British Isles, the colonists being granted all the rights exercised by those living in England, including representation in Parliament. He wanted the import of slaves and the dumping of the most vicious prisoners from English jails stopped. He wanted every conceivable step taken, including the termination of French expansion in the upper Mississippi region, which would favor the growth of the Anglo-Saxon community in North America. Although the most important of his arguments did not prevail in London, his reasoning was of course unimpeachable. Now, two centuries later, we stand at the outer boundary of the sphere to which his extraordinary vision permitted him to see. Our population has grown to nearly four times that of the British Isles and has decreased its doubling rate by only a factor of two since Franklin’s day. It is true that the fractional component of our gene pool derived from Anglo-Saxon sources has been diluted by a factor of about two from sources which Franklin in his day would have frowned upon as representing the lesser breeds, but I doubt, were he living today and familiar with the important role that this diversity has played in
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The well-known views on economics which Franklin expressed almost interminably in one way or another in Poor Richard’s Almanac pre-date Adam Smith’s Treatise on the Wealth of Nations by several decades and would seem to class Franklin in a much more conservative mold than Smith. In fact, the inherent attitudes of Poor Richard are common currency among the more reactionary members of the Senate and House whenever bills involving appropriations to states or districts other than their own are being discussed. We strongly suspect, however, that Franklin was at heart a much more bold and flexible economist than he ever allowed Poor Richard to be. For one thing, he recognized very early in his business career that trade within the colonies was hampered by the lack of adequate sources of silver, copper, and gold for coinage. As a result, he strongly supported the adoption of paper money in place of metal coinage. It is reasonable to suppose that, like Smith,
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Frederick Seita he regarded productive human labor as the root of wealth, and was prepared to endorse any action, economic or otherwise, which would serve as a catalyst for fruitful work. Had he lived during the great depression of the 1930’s, he probably would have been pleased to join the “Brain Trust” either as a scientist, economist, or sociologist in attempting to make the wheels of industry turn faster and more effectively. The problems of the gold drain and the crisis in the availability of metallic currency in these days of the automatic vending machine and the affluent numismatist would have challenged him greatly. We cannot help but marvel at the confidence he expressed in the long-range stability of our country’s economy when we read of the bequests to the cities of Boston and Philadelphia. In both cases he was prepared to allow the money to be put at interest at five per cent for 200 years before being wholly used for the philanthropic work which was his ultimate goal. He apparently had great confidence that the return on normal investments would outrun inflation for many decades. In any case The Franklin Institute has benefitted from his farsighted gift to this city. There is one respect in which he was understandably short-sighted in relation to money. As the Ambassador of our Revolutionary Government in France he was quite willing to use his personal fortune to cover a large part of the expenses needed to represent his o&e adequately in the diplomatic atmosphere of Paris. He thereby helped to establish a tradition which has made it difficult for any but wealthy men to hold the key ambassadorial posts, at least in countries where the representational aspects are important. The same principle regarding the underpayment of public officers all but pauperized Jefferson during and after his years of major public service. In this sense the philosophy of Poor Richard, applied to the higher levels of Federal employment, have haunted our land for over two centuries. I must admit, incidentally, that I am deeply intrigued by the thousand bottles of vintage wines Franklin kept on rotation in his Paris wine cellar. This aspect of Franklin’s household clearly was not under Poor Richard’s surveillance. Scientist
Finally, let me turn to Franklin the scientist. We clearly owe him an enormous debt on several scores. He demonstrated beyond any doubt that the spirit of European science could take root on this side of the Atlantic and that we have the capacity to foster scientific greatness. Moreover, in founding the American Philosophical Society, only 84 years after the founding of the Royal Society of London, Franklin did his level best to help science grow on an enduring basis by giving it a focus in the national community. Granting that Franklin’s interest in science was both deep and sincere, and that he was respected as a scientist at home as well as abroad, we may
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reasonably ask why approximately two centuries passed before our full potentialities in creative science were realized. Why were our gross contributions to basic research not on a par with those of European nations of comparable population a century ago? Why was it necessary for Joseph Henry, who served as the second president of the National Academy of Sciences between 1868 and 1878, to struggle so desperately to gain recognition for what he termed “scholarship” in science? Why, in his 1884 address to the American Association for the Advancement of Science, was it necessary for Henry Rowland to lament the profusion of weeds rather than of grain in the fields of American science? Why was it necessary for the core of Gibbs’ great work, toward the end of the last century, to be appreciated first in Europe? Clearly, no single person, least of all Franklin, can be blamed for this long, long dark age in which our national potentiality for producing good science u-as so far ahead of our productivity that we were dependent almost entirely on European science for much of the scientific basis of technology as well as for advanced education in science in its more sophisticated aspects. Yet the symptoms of the ailment can be clearly discerned in Franklin’s words and attitudes, which obviously reflected those of his compatriots in the colonies. We note the words “useful knowledge” appear in the statement of purpose of the Philosophical Society. We note that Franklin was at least as much pleased that his work on atmospheric electricity led to the invention of the lightning rod as he was with it as a source of human enlightenment. In brief, even Franklin’s faith in science seems to have been weakened by one of our greatest national obsessions, namely that knowledge must be demonstrably useful before it can be given a position of value in our scheme of things. Once this view is accepted it is easy to take that one final step and insist that support be given only to generate those species of scientific knowledge which were proven useful beforehand. This attitude has been the nemesis of American science for 290 years. As a nation we became genuinely mature in the scientific sense only when the National Science Foundation was created in 1950. It is the only Federal agency supporting scientific research on a significantly large scale which is not tied to a specific applied mission. Let me dwell on the principles involved here in more detail since so much is at stake not only for us professionally but for the nation itself. If we examine the reasons European science was able to effect the enormous technological revolution we are now witnessing, it becomes clear that three major interlocking principles or realizations are involved. These principles were evolved by a number of minds between the time of the Crusades when the great Greek manuscripts first came to the hands of the European scholars, and the days of Bacon, Galileo, and Descartes when the significance of the Novum Organum was finally appreciated. The principles are as follows :
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First, we Ie&n about nature only by studying nature. No limiting orthodoxy or dogma must be interposed between the mind of man and nature. Moreover, speculation must be tempered and tested by experiment. This principle was never fully appreciated by the Greek scientists, who were often inclined to let speculation outpace detailed observation. This inhibited them from developing sophisticated instrumentation and kept them from the great discoveries in science which characterized one major aspect of the European Renaissance. Second, knowledge of nature, or what we now call science, contains within it the means for bringing about a vast revolution in technology which can not only remove much of the routine drudgery of life from the back of man but can also open completely new opportunities for him. This principle was also missed by the Greeks who, as far as we can tell, had little interest in the applications of science as a means of easing the routine labor of man. Had they appreciated or valued this principle, it is quite possible that the modern age of science-based technology would have emerged nearly two thousand years earlier. Most important for our discussion here is the final principle that a substantial part of the material support for science must be devoted to the extension of science on the basis of decisions determined by analyzing the body of growing knowledge itself, rather than by any possible application, regardless of how high an evaluation we place upon the applications. Paradoxically, science develops most effectively and proves most useful if a significant fraction of its support is provided without regard to an immediate applied mission. Had the western Europeans, with their high standards of scholarship, not placed great value on the systematic development of science for its own sake, many of the most revolutionary practical innovations arising from it, in fields such as communications, nuclear energy, and antibiotics, would never have been conceived. With the acceptance of these principles there must also be a conscious desire to establish institutions adequate to the task of carrying through scientific research. It was a happy discovery, during the Industrial Revolution in the German states a century and a half ago, when it was found that higher education in science and research could be combined so effectively in the university. We wonder if this highly productive wedding between teaching and research will continue for another 150 years as gigantism becomes more pronounced, and indeed essential, in many aspects of research programs. Our country readily accepted the first two of the three principles stated above, namely, the importance of learning from nature without interposing arbitrary prejudice, and of anticipating great gifts from science to technology. Franklin’s work and accomplishments show that the early Americans were anxious to enter into a more fruitful association with nature through technology. It is amply clear, however, that there was unwillingness to devote a
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very significant part of our resources to the establishment of institutions where science could be exploited for its own sake in anything resembling the European tradition. This fact is very easy to explain in the light of circumstances in Franklin’s day. The colonists lived in the shadow of an enormous wilderness and were of necessity far more interested in gaining rudimentary mastery of that wilderness than in the evolution of a self-sufficient and sophisticated technology at that stage of the social and economic development of the colonies. Generally speaking, they were compelled to be users rather than conservers or extenders of resources of all kinds. What is remarkable, however, is that the attitude prevalent in Franklin’s day persisted so strongly at the national level a century later in the 1850’s when our national industrial potentialities finally began to loom significantly on the international scene. It is true the Smithsonian Institution and the National Academy were created about a century after the Philosophical Society. The Smithsonian, however, was endowed by an English chemist who had never visited the United States and was apparently inspired by the concepts of its relatively classless society and the promise which science could offer that society. The Academy, in turn, was created during the Civil War with the explicit thought that it would provide the Government with expert practical advice in science and engineering when needed for specific goals. Fortunately for our nation, inspired private philanthropy and an inherently strong educational system, combining both public and private institutions, sustained good science at least near a bare subsistence level until Federal responsibility awoke to the needs and challenges of science within our borders within the last 25 years. Let us hope that we have the wisdom as a nation to maintain the present pace until it has gained acceptance as a genuinely national tradition. If Franklin were with us today, I think it is safe to assume that in his great and broad wisdom, he would be one of the champions for the Federal support of good science.
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