Benjamin Franklin and Jonathan Edwards on Lightning and EarthquakesAuthor(s): Alfred Owen AldridgeSource: Isis, Vol. 41, No. 2 (Jul., 1950), pp. 162-164Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of The History of Science SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/227185 .

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Benjamin Franklin and Jonathan

Edwards on Lightning and Earthquakest

BY ALFRED OWEN ALDRIDGE *

D R I. Bernard Cohen has discovered that an essay on the cause of earthquakes printed by Benjamin Franklin in the Pennsylvania Gazette 8-I5 December and I5-22 December I737, numbers 470-7I, contains an explanation of

lightning essentially the same as one written by Jonathan Edwards in his diary.1 Because of the remarkable similarity of these two accounts, Cohen raised the question as to whether they derived from the same source. The essay in the Pennsylvania Gazette has been considered one of Franklin's earliest scientific writings, but it may now be demonstrated that the essay was not by Franklin at all and that Edwards prob- ably derived his ideas on lightning from the same English work from which Franklin extracted his discussion.

In the Pennsylvania Gazette we read that:

i. The earth itself may sometimes be the cause of its own shaking. . . . 2. The subter- raneous waters may occasion earthquakes by their overflowing. . . . 3. The air may be the cause of earthquakes. . . . Lastly, fire is a prin- cipal cause of earthquakes. . ..

. . . Dr. Lister is of opinion, that the material cause of thunder, lightning, and earthquakes, is one and the same, viz. the inflammable breath of the pyrites, which is a substantial sulphur, and takes fire in itself.

Edwards writes in his diary:

Lightning seems to be this: An almost infinitely fine, combustible matter, that floats in the air, that takes fire by a sudden and mighty fermen- tation, that is some way promoted by the cool and moisture, and perhaps attraction, of the clouds. By this sudden agitation, this fine, floating matter, is driven forth with a mighty force one way or other, which ever way it is directed, by the circumstances and temperature of the circumjacent air; for cold and heat, den- sity and rarity, moisture and dryness, has almost an infinitely strong influence upon the fine particles of matter. This fluid matter, thus projected, still fermenting to the same degree, divides the air as it goes, and every moment

receives a new impulse by the continued fer- mentation; and as its motion received its direc- tion, at first, from the different temperature of the air, on different sides, so its direction is changed, according to the temperature of the air it meets with, which renders the path of the lightning so crooked. The parts are so fine, and are so vehemently urged on, that they instanta- neously make their way into the pores of earthly bodies, still burning with a prodigious heat, and so instantly rarifying the rarifiable parts. Some- times these bodies are somewhat bruised; which is chiefly by the beating of the air that is, with great violence, driven every way by the inflamed matter.2

An earthquake occurred in the Mliddle Atlantic states on 7 December, I737. In the subsequent issue of the Pennsylvania Gazette, Franklin introduced his feature article with the comment:

The late earthquake felt here and probably in all the neighbouring provinces, have made many people desirous to know what may be the natural cause of such violent concussions;

we shall endeavour to gratify their curiosity by giving them the various opinions of the learned on that head.

At this point Franklin begins a word by word transcript from the article "Earth- quakes" in Ephraim Chambers' Cyclopaedia: or, an Universal Dictionary of Arts and

t This note was written with the assistance of a grant from the Penrose Fund of the Amer- ican Philosophical Society.

* University of Maryland, College Park, Md.

'Benjamin Franklin's Experiments (Cam- bridge, Massachusetts, 1941), pp. 109-111.

2Quoted by Cohen from S. E. Dwight, The Life of President Edwards (New York, I830), Appendix, p. 743.

I62 Isis, vol. 4I, JULy 1950

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Benjamin Franklin and Jonathan Edwards i63

Sciences . . . (London, I728). Franklin began copying at a point near the middle of Chambers' account, perhaps because he intended at first to devote only one issue to the subject. Then he may have decided that current interest in earthquakes de- manded that Chambers' article be printed in entirety. At any rate, in the subsequent issue he printed the rest of the article, adding at the end the material that he had previously omitted.

We know that Edwards also read Chambers' Cyclopaedia and that he used it, moreover, in his literary work. His initial knowledge of the English philosopher Francis Hutcheson, for example, came to him from the article "Beauty" in Cham- bers.3 It is quite likely, therefore, that his basic scientific knowledge derived from the same source. Judged only from the two men's interest in lightning, Edwards at this time had reached a more original and independent method of scientific inquiry than had Franklin, for Edwards does not limit his speculation to the theories in Chambers. The Pennsylvania Gazette supports other biographical evidence that Franklin had little leisure to devote to scientific speculation or experiment until I743, when his circular letter on exchanging scientific information led to the formation of the American Philosophical Society.

Five weeks after Franklin printed the article on earthquakes, it was reprinted by his fellow publisher William Parks in the Virginia Gazette with an introduction very much like Franklin's.

We having in our last given an Account of the Concussions, we shall endeavour to gratify their Earthquake felt in several Places to the North- Curiosity, by giving them the various Opinions ward, and many People being desirous to know of the Learned on that Head.' what may be the natural Cause of such violent

We know that Parks took his material from Franklin instead of directly from Chambers because he followed Franklin's inverted order instead of the order of the original. He also reprinted from Franklin's news columns an account of the earth- quake in Philadelphia, where it had been less violent than in New York. This is Franklin's only original writing on earthquakes at this time. For three or four evenings successively after the earthquake, "an unusual Redness appeared in the Western Sky and southwards, continuing about an Hour after Sunset, gradually declining." The quake was not felt in Annapolis; but at Newcastle, Delaware, and at Conestogoe, one hundred miles west of Philadelphia. the tremors were as violent as in Philadelphia. From a source in New York, Franklin reported that "the first Sense we had of it was like a strong Gale of Wind, which encreased 'til it began to resemble the Noise of Coaches swiftly driven."

Chambers had been extremely useful to Franklin on subjects other than earth- quakes. When the Pennsylvania Gazette had been published by Samuel Keimer under the title of The Universal Instructor in all Arts and Sciences: and Pennsylvania Gazette, at least half of its contents consisted of extracts from Chambers. In forty issues Keimer had published evervthing in Chambers from A to AIR. When Franklin became editor, 25 September I729, he announced that the dictionary from Chambers would be discontinued; then despite this disavowal, he later reprinted Chambers' articles on hemp (No. 42), on inoculation for smallpox (No. 8o), and on Free-Masonry (No. I30).

One other essay in the Pennsylvania Gazette which is sometimes taken as evidence of Franklin's early scientific pursuits is "Of the late wonderful Discoveries, and Im- provements of Arts and Sciences," which appeared I4 October I736, No. 409. This

' Thomas H. Johnson, "Jonathan Edwards' Background of Reading," Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, XXVIII (December, 1931), 204.

420-27 January, 27 January-3 February,

1737, Nos. 78-79. Because before 1753 the new year did not begin until 25 March, January 1737 (or January 1937/8), was obviously the month following December 1737.

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I64 Alfred Owen Aldridge

essay may show that Franklin had an interest in science, but it provides no more evi- dence than does the essay on earthquakes of Franklin's independent investigations, for like that essay it is merely an extract from another source. It appeared originally in The Prompter, a London literary periodical, ii June 1736, No. I67. Before Franklin it had been reprinted moreover in the London Magazine, June, 1736, and in the New England Weekly Journal, 2I September I736, No. 494; after Franklin it was printed by William Parks in the Virginia Gazette, 7-I4 January 1736, No. 24.

Was This the Fate of the Library

of Alexander von Humboldt?

An Inquiry BY VICTOR WOLFGANG VON HAGEN *

O- N 6 May I859, Alexander von Humboldt, at the age of ninety years, died in his rooms at Oranienburg-strasse 67 in Berlin.' The whole world, as is evi- denced by the newspapers of the day, went into mourning over the "greatest

man since Aristotle." At once to capitalize on his name, numerous books were pub- lished, notably his letters to Varnhagen von Ense 2 and the intellectual and publishing world vied with each other to tumble out their publications on Humboldt upon an avid public. In view of this consuming public interest in all phases of Humboldtiana, it is amazing to find the indifference that attended the disposal of his library. On 2 Sep- tember I853, Humboldt added a codicil to his will which had been drawn up pre- viously in I84I ;3 by the terms of this codicil and by a letter addressed to his servant,4

* Hickory Hill, Westport, Conn. Humboldt lived here after he had been

"driven" from the house where he had enter- tained Gauss, as he facetiously remarked to King Frederick Wilhelm IV in 1841, because of the erection of a new Museum.

'Briefe von Alexander von Humboldt an Varnhagen von Ense aus den Jahren z827-58 (Leipzig, I86o). The publication of these letters immediately after Humboldt's death was one of the prime causes for a decline of his universal popularity. "My friend Humboldt," said Steiner in comment, "has the most affectionate heart and the most slanderous tongue of anyone I ever knew."

'The contents of Humboldt's will was drawn Io May 1841. A codicil, dated 20 September I853, stated "that it would be quite unnecessary that anything should be sealed after his death as everything in the house was left to his servant [Seifert] and his family. Alexander von Hum- boldt, edited by Karl Bruhns, vol. ii, 405 (Lon- don, I873).

'Humboldt's letter to Seifert, dated Berlin, I855, reads: "My dear Seifert,-In order to shield you from any aspersions that might pos- sibly be cast upon your well-proved honesty and trustworthiness, I wish to certify by this letter (since by the Providence of God, at my

advanced age, I may be suddenly removed by death) that I have given during my life and of my free will, to you and your heirs, in acknowl- edgment of your valuable services, the sum of 2,688 thalers - being the value of the decoration of the order of the Red Eagle in brilliants, which was with great liberality paid to me at my re- quest in February I855 by the Comptroller of the Royal Household. I herewith repeat the statement made in my will of May io, I841, de- posited in the Criminal Court, that I make over to you, and after your death to your heirs, all the goods that are in my house; gold medals, chronometers and clocks, books, maps, pictures, engravings, sculpture, instruments, sable furs, linen, the small amount of plate, beds, and the whole furniture, under the condition, to me of a painful character, that should his Majesty the King, who now overwhelms me with favours, not be able to fulfill my request for a gift of a few thousand thalers for the liquidation of my debt to the house of Al. Mendelssohn, from whom I have been in the habit of receiving ac- commodation for the last fifty years, you will endeavour to meet my liabilities by the sale of the 'Chalcography,' which must be worth more than 2,500 thalers. This I have no doubt you will be willing to do from your feelings of honour and respect to my memory. I may yet

Isis, vol. 4r, July I950

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