Science in the Early Republic

F OR a few years after the opening of the nineteenth century, a small band of Bostonians, desirous of renewing and extending our acquaintance with Natural Philosophy; and, if occasion offer, of introducing it to the attention of others, organized a club dedicated to the study of chemistry and other branches of science. The prestigious American Academy of Arts and Sciences circulated scientific papers and made collections of artifacts; the members of the Society for the Study of Natural Philosophy set up a laboratory and performed experiments. Acting on the belief that it was as possible to be an amateur of the sciences as to be an amateur of the arts, they invested substantial amounts of money and time in their experiment in postgraduate education. The contours of scientific knowledge were changing during the early years of the Republic. A great revolution in chemistry was underway, based on the work of Lavoisier, but chemistry still smacked of the occult, of necromancers seeking the philosopher's stone.1 Electricity was a phenomenon only beginning to be comprehended. The new paleontology of Daubenton and Georges Cuvier raised questions about the age of the earth and the necessity for direct divine intercession in the development of species, questions as unsettling as those which would later be raised by Charles Darwin. After the event, it is easy to honor the men whose labors laid the grounds for evolutionary biology and modern

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• Fashioning Americans

  Michael Stephens, Michael D Stephens•International Journal of Lifelong…•1983

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