Good Stuff: Fresh Air

Spring 2009

By Herb Kohl

The Invention of Air
By Steven Johnson
(Riverhead Books, 2008)
272 pp. $25.95

Joseph Priestly (1733-1804) could reasonably be called a Noam Chomsky for his times. He was an accomplished scientist, a political activist, educational reformer, and theological radical.

Priestly's stirring story—and the story of the intellectual and scientific ferment that occurred around the time of the American and French Revolutions—is beautifully told in Steven Johnson's The Invention of Air.

It's a delightful read and particularly interested me as a starting point for developing an extended integrated curriculum unit which would illuminate revolution and change in the interaction of science, politics, and religion during the 18th century. In this time of global warming, genetic engineering, global capitalism, and fundamentalist religion the lines between these aspects of life are blurring and there is a great deal to learn from Priestly's life and work.

Priestly was credited with discovering that plants absorbed carbon dioxide and produced oxygen, and conjectured that as electrical charges approached each other the forces between them dramatically increased. This is now known as Coulomb's law. He also demonstrated that glass is a conductor of electricity and identified carbon and oxygen as elements. In one of his experiments he made the first soda water and thought of bottling and selling it. He was a good friend and colleague of Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson and, at great risk, supported the American Revolution as a British citizen. He also was a founder of the Unitarian Church and wrote several volumes arguing that Jesus was not divine. Scientific thinking to him was just one example of the reason, research, and experiment which must be applied to politics and religion. As he said, "The English hierarchy (if there be anything unsound in its constitution) has ... reason to tremble at an air pump or an electrical machine," which were the tools of his scientific experiments.

Priestly was part of the Coffee House Culture of London, which consisted of radical intellectuals who were at the same time political thinkers, natural scientists, and theological Dissenters (they opposed the Church of England as well as the Roman Catholic Church). Towards the end of his life his political and religious views, expressed in pamphlets and sermons, led to his house being burned down and he and his wife fleeing to the United States where he died. In his 10 years in the U.S., he corresponded with Thomas Jefferson, helping him design a "modern" curriculum for the University of Virginia.