To Everyone An Experiment: Steven Johnson's The Invention Of Air

Statue of Joseph Priestley, Chamberlain Square,
Birmingham, England. 1874 by A W Williamson,
recast in bronze 1951.

I can't tell you how much I am excited to get these posts to a better hour. By Monday I promise.

In the meantime I need to be excited about Steven Johnson's wonderful history of the remarkable Dr. Joseph Priestley.

While in no way a gem from a writing standpoint, the organization of the ideas and the driving point (even the fact that the point is driving) of the book is what makes it one of the best of the year.


The Invention Of Air: A Story of Science, Faith, Revolution, and The Birth Of America by Steven Johnson. Riverhead Books. Trade Paperback. ISBN: 1594484015. $16.00.

Like In Other Rooms (featured yesterday) this title was published in hardcover early in 2009 and is now available in paperback. For the Walmart types it is also available on Kindle.

Long day. Sorry.

So about that amazing Dr. Joseph Priestley.

Priestley was a preternatural talent who could memorize and recite almost anything put before him. He had memorized the responses to the 107 questions of the Westminster Short Catechism by the age of four. More than just a talent for memorization, Priestley had that supreme gift of the true scientist: curiosity.

The subject of Steven Johnson’s intellectual biography would be somewhat of an anomaly in our age. After all, how many leading scientists do you know whose intellectual interests oscillate easily from science to politics and then to religion? This is the major theme to Johnson’s book; that intellectual life shouldn’t be isolated and codified like the subject of a textbook.

Despite (or is that too casuist of a word?) his early theological training Priestley was very much interested in the new wave of scientific discoveries. In particular he was interested in the work of the electricians (yes, that stolid trade started as experimental science). He was particularly taken with the work of a man from Philadelphia who spent a great deal of his time in Warrington, England. The man was Benjamin Franklin and the two would become lifelong friends.

Priestley was introduced to Franklin at a meeting of the Honest Whigs, a group which Franklin belonged to whose sole purpose was to discuss natural and moral philosophy. Well, not sole. They also drank and ate prodigiously. Priestley was on hand as a guest who sought their blessing (Franklin was one of the foremost experts on electricity) for a common history of electricity he wanted to write. Priestley wanted to make the science of electricity understood in plain language that anyone who could read would understand. Franklin, who had great success in the Colonies as a publisher, understood the potential of such a history. Franklin also was a political idealist, and such a concept of populism in science probably delighted him.

Science had been a field of knowledge populated by such legends as Isaac Newton, whose discoveries a hundred years before had seemed to come out of thin air. Newton was revered as a demigod, largely because of the cloistered life Newton lived. Priestley, in the tradition of Franklin, showed his findings and experiments to everyone who asked. There was no secrecy or isolation like Newton’s. Naturally this openness was taken advantage of.

Priestley, somewhat accidentally, discovered a process for carbonating water. His invention was a hit at parties and elevated his status in the scientific community. He even published a pamphlet on how to duplicate the process. Within a decade or so, Johann Jacob Schweppe (yes, as in Schweppes ginger ale) produced the first marketed soda water. Priestley made nothing from it.

Evelyn Waugh made a interesting midday drink from it, Guinness and gin.

Priestley went on to achieve many firsts. For one he was the first of a growing tradition of scientists who fled to the United States to avoid persecution. In his case it was because of some very scandalous interpretations of the New Testament.

Before his exile, he discovered oxygen (though he failed to understand it fully) through experiments involving mint sprigs, mice and sealed bottles. He was the first, with Franklin’s aid, to realize the relationship between the “clean” air produced by plants and our dependency upon it.

Franklin upped the anti (as he so often did).

"From these discoveries we are assured, that no vegetable grows in vain, but that from the oak forest to the grass field, every plant is serviceable to mankind…nor is the woods that flourish in the most remote and unpeopled regions unprofitable to us, nor we to them…”

Franklin went on to hope that this new discovery would curb the barely begun deforestation of the inhabited world.

The above is the essential point to Johnson’s book. Not that of celebrating a budding environmentalism (though it is impressive to think about), but the notion that everyday life and lofty ideas are inseparably linked. We live in a day and age where specialization has replaced intellectual curiosity. Johnson’s entertaining book reminds us that it doesn’t take a lot to be aware of the workings of subjects like politics and science. We merely have to be curious.

In the 165 letters written between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, George Washington is mentioned three times. Benjamin Franklin receives five mentions. The mutual rival of Adams and Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, is referred to only twice. Dr. Joseph Priestley, an English scientist and theologian, warrants 52 mentions.