Benjamin Franklin and Science, Continuing Opportunities for Study

摘要

The books about Benjamin Franklin keep piling up, each fat tome ample evidence that the famous early American continues to fascinate people. Do we now know everything about the man? Probably not, and definitely not when it comes to his work in science, which remains the elephant in the room. Science was the most important part of Franklin's life, but, quite oddly, it is the least thoroughly and systematically examined part of that sprawling and eventful life. Franklin is the biographer's delight and despair, not least because of his range of accomplishments—he seemed to do, see, or at least comment on everything. Several new catalogue-of-a-life biographies copiously document Franklin's impact and accomplishments; other studies focus on his specific contributions to many—almost too many—events and activities in the eighteenth century. Franklin wrote and published on nearly every topic imaginable. He took an active political role from the 1740s until his death in 1790; he was warrior, diplomat, peacemaker. He had strong yet, in the end, reverent opinions on religion. He was client of several men, then himself patron to many men and women. He was devoted to some members of his family but neglected others; he had many friends, but also enemies. He did brilliant experimental work on electricity, then left experimentation to others. He is ubiquitous and changingly meaningful, our eighteenth-century Zelig.