on Joseph Priestley
14/3/06 02:23![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bronze_ribbonsToday's Google cartoon refers to Percival Lowell and is a click-through to Google-Mars. Too cool!
Some of you asked to see the text of my Priestley sermon. A rough draft is below -- I ended up ad-libbing the second half of it, which is why the last third of this script will read unevenly. (I'd hold off posting this, but I'm being clobbered by the to-do list and don't see myself returning to this before summer.)
"Joseph Priestley: Clergyman, Chemist, and Revolutionary"
Lately, I’ve been mulling over the phrase “May you live in interesting times.” It’s usually spoken of as an ancient Chinese curse, but when I decided to double-check its provenance yesterday, it turned out that its origins are likely neither ancient nor Chinese. The oldest verifiable reference to the phrase appears to be a 1950s British science-fiction story by Eric Frank Russell. It also reportedly showed up in a Spanish edition of a Jungian study during the 1930s, but no one’s been able to connect it to an existing copy. It’s also faintly possible that it is a permutation of some antique Asian proverb -- in the same way that it could be an ancient African saying, or an ancient European imprecation, or a snippet of vintage Latin American wisdom. It depends on how you choose to view the lack of evidence, and whether you’re disposed to interpret it as proof of a negative or a positive.
This, of course, is a challenge that has plagued both religion and science since time immemorial. It’s one of the reasons I’m flummoxed when I hear science and religion spoken of as opposites or enemies: in my experience, both skepticism and faith are essential to the practice of good science and good theology. At their best, both disciplines require their practitioners to consider what beliefs they take for granted as they attempt to identify and articulate various facets of truth. At their worst, organized religion and institutional science can lend an undeserved and unfortunate authority to individuals who wish to bully others using the voice of Almighty God or Almighty Science to do so. Over the centuries, religion has been used both to justify and to combat slavery, homophobia, and other social blights; there are statistics that can be commandeered and manipulated as needed to support virtually any stance in the long-term, no-end-in-sight debates over abortion, the war in Iraq, and other fraught issues. Between these two poles – truth as a form of love, and truth as a tool of hate – there’s a whole range of ways in which critical thought and adventures in faith can and do intersect.
To me, it has become important to insist on this, because I hear too much “either-or” language even amongst my own friends and relatives when it comes to these two realms of quasi-systematic thought. There are self-proclaimed cynics who are aware that I am deeply involved with my church who will nevertheless declare in my presence that religion is “the opiate of the masses” or some other condescending canard. I tend to get frustrated when I run into generalizations about evangelical Christians, because they’re not all willful ignoramuses, and it’s neither fair nor productive to lump them automatically in with the reactionaries who bleat against evolution or call for the banning of books.
At the same time, there are also people with whom I cannot hold a conversation without wanting to give them a skepticism transplant, or at least a quick lesson on how something isn’t necessarily true just because they want it to be or because they saw it in print. I have been severely tempted to learn hacking skills, because I would love to disable the “forward” function on at least half a dozen computers that don’t belong to me, and to set snopes.com – the urban legends debunking site -- as the default page on the web browsers of said computers.
We do live in interesting times. Over the past six years, I’ve been watching fear escalate amongst many of my peers as they witness intellectual and religious liberties coming under siege. I’ve started to notice heightened concern over the state of American research funding as well. The general climate for critical inquiry feels significantly chiller than it used to.
It’s within this frame that I’d like to look at the career of Joseph Priestley. Priestley was an 18th-century Englishman who was initially raised as a Noncomformist Presbyterian but migrated toward Unitarian Christianity during the course of his studies. His primary career was that of a minister, but his best-known legacy to the future has turned out to be his scientific investigations into the nature of carbon dioxide and oxygen. During his term as the pastor of a congregation in Leeds, England, Priestley lived next door to a brewery. He noticed that the air around fermenting beer behaved differently than air in other locations, and developed a method of infusing water with what he called “fixed air” – what we know as carbon dioxide. In other words, he was carbonating water during the 1760s, a hundred years before the advent of Coca-Cola, and he eventually figured out how to recreate this special air with materials other than beer. A few years later, his experiments had advanced to a degree that allowed him to observe and isolate oxygen from other chemical elements, and he would also be amongst the first to study the properties of ammonia, sulphur dioxide, hydrogen sulphide, and carbon monoxide. He’s also credited as one of the first people to notice that rubber worked just as well as breadcrumbs as an eraser, although it was another Englishman who actually followed through on creating and marketing blocks of Indian gum for that purpose.
In short, Priestley was a phenomenally smart guy. He was also a confidant of Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Rush, and other intellectual giants now revered as our nation’s Founding Fathers. At this point, it bears repeating that Priestley was an Englishman. Good Englishmen were not supposed to be sympathizing with the revolt of the colonies. Good Englishmen did not publish essays with titles such as The Present State of Liberty in Great Britain and her Colonies and Observations on Civil Liberty and the Nature and Justice of the War with America. Good Englishmen did not pen letters to Benjamin Franklin urging the United States to “some better provision for securing your natural rights against the incroachment of power, in whomsoever placed.”
However, Priestley probably would’ve gotten into trouble no matter what, given the English laws against religious dissent during that era; individuals expressing non-Anglican views risked losing their citizenship. Although Priestley wrote defenses of religion in response to nonbelievers, he also wrote A History of the Corruptions of Christianity and A History of the Early Opinions Concerning Jesus Christ, in which he criticized Trinitarian doctrine, netting him denunciations in Parliament and other prominent venues.
It was his endorsement of the French Revolution, however, that ultimately forced his emigration to America. On the second anniversary of Bastille Day, a liquored-up Birmingham, England mob torched Priestley’s home, lab, and church. They were after Priestley, too, but his family had been warned just in time for them to flee. Priestley lost everything – all his equipment, all of his books, all of his notes and papers—and was persuaded to sail to America, where he settled in Pennsylvania and helped establish the First Unitarian Church of Philadelphia in 1796. He continued to preach, and he continued writing for publication until the day he died.
[The rest of this is a blend of outline, transcript, and post-pulpit "this is what I would have said were I more polished when I extemporize..." I have got to learn to write faster...]
Interesting times, indeed. In looking at Priestley’s life and times, I’m struck by a number of things. The first is his tenacity: he could have stayed quiet, or given up, or focused on less controversial topics and maintained a lower profile. He could have ignored the Royal Society when they failed to accept qualified prospective members for political reasons. He could have rested on his scientific laurels and refrained from political or theological commentary altogether. He could have abandoned science when all of his equipment and years of research were destroyed in the Birmingham riots. Yet, he persisted.
The second thing that stands out to me is that, he wasn’t always right, and his achievements don’t lend themselves to easy celebration because they’re not reducible to easy soundbites. Some people call him the man wh o discovered oxygen, but there are Scheele and Lavoisier to account for...
The third thing has been rediscovering how unreliable sources can be. In searching for articles on Priestley, I found myself eventually mistrusting or second-guessing many of the claims about his achievements -- even for the webpages that listed bibliographies...
The fourth thing is, what a difference 200 years make. We still have such a long way to go, but look at how far we've come since Priestley's era in both religious tolerance and extent of scientific knowledge. Look at how much we know about oxygen now.. [*kicks self for not thinking to mention oxygen bars*]
The fifth thing has been how reading about Priestley reminds me of my own postulates -- the overriding biases that form the underpinnings of my faith. In my case, it's that I cannot believe in a God who would give us brains and then expect us not to use them. I do not believe in a God so unsophisticated that His world would be readily comprehensible to me. That it is complex and maddening is to be expected; I believe its workings fail to make perfect sense because of my inadequacies rather than God's. I cannot prove this -- and so, there is little point in arguing with someone who does not accept the postulate -- but I think recognizing and admitting to what one's postulates are is a key to maintaining equilibrium and perspective...
The sixth thing: Priestley is but one but many working scientists who have able to reconcile both research and religion. My college's alumni magazine recently interviewed an evangelical Christian astronony professor:
The same interviewer also spoke with the Divinity School dean:
...In the end, here's what I want to leave you with: [*gesturing to the chalice and candles*] We understand so much more now about how to manipulate oxygen and how to create fire. We mass-produce matches and candles. And yet, these flames are no less mysterious or poetic than before; they are still holy with the power we invest in them to represent our joys and concerns, to symbolize community and commitment. Our ultimate legacy from Joseph Priestley is to continue his work -- of keeping the light of truth alive during interesting times. Amen and alleluia.
Some of you asked to see the text of my Priestley sermon. A rough draft is below -- I ended up ad-libbing the second half of it, which is why the last third of this script will read unevenly. (I'd hold off posting this, but I'm being clobbered by the to-do list and don't see myself returning to this before summer.)
"Joseph Priestley: Clergyman, Chemist, and Revolutionary"
Lately, I’ve been mulling over the phrase “May you live in interesting times.” It’s usually spoken of as an ancient Chinese curse, but when I decided to double-check its provenance yesterday, it turned out that its origins are likely neither ancient nor Chinese. The oldest verifiable reference to the phrase appears to be a 1950s British science-fiction story by Eric Frank Russell. It also reportedly showed up in a Spanish edition of a Jungian study during the 1930s, but no one’s been able to connect it to an existing copy. It’s also faintly possible that it is a permutation of some antique Asian proverb -- in the same way that it could be an ancient African saying, or an ancient European imprecation, or a snippet of vintage Latin American wisdom. It depends on how you choose to view the lack of evidence, and whether you’re disposed to interpret it as proof of a negative or a positive.
This, of course, is a challenge that has plagued both religion and science since time immemorial. It’s one of the reasons I’m flummoxed when I hear science and religion spoken of as opposites or enemies: in my experience, both skepticism and faith are essential to the practice of good science and good theology. At their best, both disciplines require their practitioners to consider what beliefs they take for granted as they attempt to identify and articulate various facets of truth. At their worst, organized religion and institutional science can lend an undeserved and unfortunate authority to individuals who wish to bully others using the voice of Almighty God or Almighty Science to do so. Over the centuries, religion has been used both to justify and to combat slavery, homophobia, and other social blights; there are statistics that can be commandeered and manipulated as needed to support virtually any stance in the long-term, no-end-in-sight debates over abortion, the war in Iraq, and other fraught issues. Between these two poles – truth as a form of love, and truth as a tool of hate – there’s a whole range of ways in which critical thought and adventures in faith can and do intersect.
To me, it has become important to insist on this, because I hear too much “either-or” language even amongst my own friends and relatives when it comes to these two realms of quasi-systematic thought. There are self-proclaimed cynics who are aware that I am deeply involved with my church who will nevertheless declare in my presence that religion is “the opiate of the masses” or some other condescending canard. I tend to get frustrated when I run into generalizations about evangelical Christians, because they’re not all willful ignoramuses, and it’s neither fair nor productive to lump them automatically in with the reactionaries who bleat against evolution or call for the banning of books.
At the same time, there are also people with whom I cannot hold a conversation without wanting to give them a skepticism transplant, or at least a quick lesson on how something isn’t necessarily true just because they want it to be or because they saw it in print. I have been severely tempted to learn hacking skills, because I would love to disable the “forward” function on at least half a dozen computers that don’t belong to me, and to set snopes.com – the urban legends debunking site -- as the default page on the web browsers of said computers.
We do live in interesting times. Over the past six years, I’ve been watching fear escalate amongst many of my peers as they witness intellectual and religious liberties coming under siege. I’ve started to notice heightened concern over the state of American research funding as well. The general climate for critical inquiry feels significantly chiller than it used to.
It’s within this frame that I’d like to look at the career of Joseph Priestley. Priestley was an 18th-century Englishman who was initially raised as a Noncomformist Presbyterian but migrated toward Unitarian Christianity during the course of his studies. His primary career was that of a minister, but his best-known legacy to the future has turned out to be his scientific investigations into the nature of carbon dioxide and oxygen. During his term as the pastor of a congregation in Leeds, England, Priestley lived next door to a brewery. He noticed that the air around fermenting beer behaved differently than air in other locations, and developed a method of infusing water with what he called “fixed air” – what we know as carbon dioxide. In other words, he was carbonating water during the 1760s, a hundred years before the advent of Coca-Cola, and he eventually figured out how to recreate this special air with materials other than beer. A few years later, his experiments had advanced to a degree that allowed him to observe and isolate oxygen from other chemical elements, and he would also be amongst the first to study the properties of ammonia, sulphur dioxide, hydrogen sulphide, and carbon monoxide. He’s also credited as one of the first people to notice that rubber worked just as well as breadcrumbs as an eraser, although it was another Englishman who actually followed through on creating and marketing blocks of Indian gum for that purpose.
In short, Priestley was a phenomenally smart guy. He was also a confidant of Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Rush, and other intellectual giants now revered as our nation’s Founding Fathers. At this point, it bears repeating that Priestley was an Englishman. Good Englishmen were not supposed to be sympathizing with the revolt of the colonies. Good Englishmen did not publish essays with titles such as The Present State of Liberty in Great Britain and her Colonies and Observations on Civil Liberty and the Nature and Justice of the War with America. Good Englishmen did not pen letters to Benjamin Franklin urging the United States to “some better provision for securing your natural rights against the incroachment of power, in whomsoever placed.”
However, Priestley probably would’ve gotten into trouble no matter what, given the English laws against religious dissent during that era; individuals expressing non-Anglican views risked losing their citizenship. Although Priestley wrote defenses of religion in response to nonbelievers, he also wrote A History of the Corruptions of Christianity and A History of the Early Opinions Concerning Jesus Christ, in which he criticized Trinitarian doctrine, netting him denunciations in Parliament and other prominent venues.
It was his endorsement of the French Revolution, however, that ultimately forced his emigration to America. On the second anniversary of Bastille Day, a liquored-up Birmingham, England mob torched Priestley’s home, lab, and church. They were after Priestley, too, but his family had been warned just in time for them to flee. Priestley lost everything – all his equipment, all of his books, all of his notes and papers—and was persuaded to sail to America, where he settled in Pennsylvania and helped establish the First Unitarian Church of Philadelphia in 1796. He continued to preach, and he continued writing for publication until the day he died.
[The rest of this is a blend of outline, transcript, and post-pulpit "this is what I would have said were I more polished when I extemporize..." I have got to learn to write faster...]
Interesting times, indeed. In looking at Priestley’s life and times, I’m struck by a number of things. The first is his tenacity: he could have stayed quiet, or given up, or focused on less controversial topics and maintained a lower profile. He could have ignored the Royal Society when they failed to accept qualified prospective members for political reasons. He could have rested on his scientific laurels and refrained from political or theological commentary altogether. He could have abandoned science when all of his equipment and years of research were destroyed in the Birmingham riots. Yet, he persisted.
The second thing that stands out to me is that, he wasn’t always right, and his achievements don’t lend themselves to easy celebration because they’re not reducible to easy soundbites. Some people call him the man wh o discovered oxygen, but there are Scheele and Lavoisier to account for...
The third thing has been rediscovering how unreliable sources can be. In searching for articles on Priestley, I found myself eventually mistrusting or second-guessing many of the claims about his achievements -- even for the webpages that listed bibliographies...
The fourth thing is, what a difference 200 years make. We still have such a long way to go, but look at how far we've come since Priestley's era in both religious tolerance and extent of scientific knowledge. Look at how much we know about oxygen now.. [*kicks self for not thinking to mention oxygen bars*]
The fifth thing has been how reading about Priestley reminds me of my own postulates -- the overriding biases that form the underpinnings of my faith. In my case, it's that I cannot believe in a God who would give us brains and then expect us not to use them. I do not believe in a God so unsophisticated that His world would be readily comprehensible to me. That it is complex and maddening is to be expected; I believe its workings fail to make perfect sense because of my inadequacies rather than God's. I cannot prove this -- and so, there is little point in arguing with someone who does not accept the postulate -- but I think recognizing and admitting to what one's postulates are is a key to maintaining equilibrium and perspective...
The sixth thing: Priestley is but one but many working scientists who have able to reconcile both research and religion. My college's alumni magazine recently interviewed an evangelical Christian astronony professor:
“I don’t try to make the literal resolution” between science and Christianity, [Donald York] says. “We’re always changing and growing, and some things are acceptable at different times.” To him, “Science is a story just like the religious stories. We are trying to find out how things happened biologically and physically. In every age there’s a story.” As he notes in talks to small colleges and religious groups, what scientists believe now is different than 100, 20, and even five years ago. “In many ways it’s an act of faith that the rational process will lead men to a higher place,” he says.
The same interviewer also spoke with the Divinity School dean:
The questions asked by both scientists and religious believers are important: “Where does science begin? How do we know the truth in science? How do we set up parameters? Scientists have important things to say to theologians, but theologians also have important things to say to biologists.” The two camps need to engage each other. “If I don’t understand Darwin well, then I’m not doing my job,” [Rosengarten] says. “And biologists who don’t take seriously the inherent rigor of philosophy and theology do an equal disservice.”
Noting that “all the great universities of the world were founded with explicit reference to religious commitment of some sort,” Richard Rosengarten stresses that “millions of religious people have thought they could be religious and engage in” intellectual pursuits simultaneously. “The most important philosopher for Aquinas was that pagan Aristotle,” he says, whose ideas “revolutionized Catholic theology and became the orthodox expression of Catholic thought.”
...In the end, here's what I want to leave you with: [*gesturing to the chalice and candles*] We understand so much more now about how to manipulate oxygen and how to create fire. We mass-produce matches and candles. And yet, these flames are no less mysterious or poetic than before; they are still holy with the power we invest in them to represent our joys and concerns, to symbolize community and commitment. Our ultimate legacy from Joseph Priestley is to continue his work -- of keeping the light of truth alive during interesting times. Amen and alleluia.
