The Original Lunatics

Just finished a book called “The Lunar Men. Five Friends Whose Curiosity Changed the World” by Jenny Uglow.  The book relates the history of the Lunar Society in Birmingham (England) in the last half of the Eighteenth Century. It was so named because it met on the Monday of the month closest to the full moon, the better to be able to see on their way home at night.

The Lunar Society was composed of men who together provided the impetus for the Industrial Revolution: Joseph Priestley (discoverer of oxygen); Joseph Watt (inventor of the steam engine); Erasmus Darwin, leading doctor and botanist, who developed the first analysis of evolution (made more famous by his grandson Charles), John Boulton, industrialist, Josiah Wedgewood, John Baskerville (who designed the Baskerville type face, which I use for all my documents) and a number of others. They had close ties with other scientists internationally, including Benjamin Franklin.

Their achievements were innumerable, and the ideas kept flowing.  To name a few: Based on the study of geological strata and plant fossils, Darwin developed a theory of evolution, and in fact added the slogan “E Conchis Omnia” – “Everything From Shells” to his coat of arms until he was forced to paint it out due to intense pressure from the Church. It took a large number of experiments with various chemicals to reliably produce the famous Wedgewood pottery. Darwin and others did extensive research on plant life and reproduction (causing a scandal with the revelation that plants had a sex life). In the course of his research on oxygen, Priestley also invented soda water, then licensed by the firm of J.J. Schwepe (sound familiar?). It was thought to be good for the health. The Lunar Men were also instrumental in creating a system of canals across England, thus vastly improving transportation (and making it cheaper by orders of magnitude). Boulton and Watt invented the measure of “horsepower” still in use today.

But their biggest achievement was to firmly establish the scientific method and to assert that the entire world was susceptible to analysis.  Thus most of them were Dissenters or members of the newly-formed Unitarian church (“religion for atheists”) if not outright atheists. In addition, coming from the provinces, they were less subject to the hide-bound London establishment. Priestley, for example, gave thanks “that I was born a dissenter, not manacled by the chains of so debasing a system as that of the Church of England, and that I was not educated at Oxford or Cambridge.” That is also the reason why so many of them were either Scots or educated in Scotland. A parallel book by Arthur Herman, “How the Scots Invented the Modern World,” is also worth reading.

The Lunar men support both the American and French revolutions. Following the French Revolution, the entire program of enlightenment, reason and democratic reform that the Lunar men represented came under violent attack in England. Priestley was forced to emigrate to America under the protection of Thomas Jefferson (who said that his time as a student of one of the Lunar men “probably fixed the destinies of my life...and from his conversation I got my first views of the expansion of science & the system of things in which we are placed”). Reactionary mobs attacked their houses and burned their libraries. For the early 19th century, science was seen as dangerous, demonic and revolutionary.

But the industrial revolution pushed on — stripped of some of the enlightenment shown by industrialists like Boulton. 

A fascinating and enlightening book.

Comments

[Seattle IT Consulting]

That is also the purpose why so many of them were either Scottish or knowledgeable in Scotland. A similar publication by Arthur Herman, “How the Scottish Created the Present day Community,” is also truly worth examining.