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The Image of Science as a Threat: Burke versus Priestley and the ‘Philosophic Revolution’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2009

Maurice Crosland
Maurice Crosland
Affiliation:
Unit for the History of Science, Physics Building, University of Kent, Canterbury, Kent CT2 7NR, U.K.
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Extract

So much of the history of science has been written from the point of view of the scientist or the proto-scientist that it may be salutary for the modern reader occasionally to consider how science and its early practitioners were viewed from the outside. We must not be too surprised if a pioneering activity performed by controversial agents was misunderstood or misrepresented and if what emerges is, therefore, sometimes less of a portrait than a caricature. We are concerned here much less with what natural philosophers actually did than what they were thought to have done, or what they were thought to stand for. The image is sometimes more influential than the reality. Considering that the period to be studied is one of major political and social unrest and that the principal spokesman, Edmund Burke (1729–1797), had made his reputation mainly in the arena of parliamentary politics, we can anticipate rather more polemic than dispassionate argument. In the formation of public opinion a colourful exaggeration or even an occasional sneer are often more effective than the objective exposition of a case. The spectacles through which Burke looked at his world sometimes magnified and often distorted, but they produced a view of knowledge and society shared by many of his contemporaries and of considerable subsequent influence.

Type
Research Article
Information
The British Journal for the History of Science , Volume 20 , Issue 3 , July 1987 , pp. 277 - 307
Copyright
Copyright © British Society for the History of Science 1987

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References

I should like to express my thanks to colleagues at the University of Kent for comments on different aspects of this paper, especially to Grayson Ditchfield, who generously allowed me to benefit from his expertise in the eighteenth-century English political scene and the role of the Dissenters; also to Alec Dolby and Crosbie Smith,with whom I discussed the conclusions. In the University of Kent library I have been able to draw on the valuable resources of the Maddison Collection, which includes strong Priestley holdings.

1 A recent bibliography, listing more than 1600 secondary works on Burke, gets no nearer to the subject of the present paper than a handful of works which relate him to the Enlightenment. See Gandy, Clara I. and Stanlis, Peter J., Edmund Burke. A bibliography of Secondary Studies to 1982, New York and London, 1983.Google ScholarStanlis, P., Edmund Burke and the Natural Law, Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1958Google Scholar, is a valuable book on its subject but the author specifically excludes physical science from his discussion (p. 5). He declines to consider die relation of his subject to science, of which he is wholly critical (p. 23). Many authors, if they mention Burke's discussion of science, imply that this was no more than the use of a metaphor, e.g. Deane, Seamus F., ‘Burke and the French philosophes’, Studies in Burke and His Time, (1968/1969), 10, pp. 1113–1137 (p. 1117).Google ScholarChapman, Gerald W., Edmund Burke, the Practical Imagination, Cambridge, Mass., 1967, p. 278CrossRefGoogle Scholar devotes three lines to Burke's use of scientific terms. A book with considerable authority is Boulton, J. J., The Language of Politics in the Age of Wilkes and Burke, London, 1963Google Scholar, especially chapter 7, although again the emphasis is on metaphor. Freeman, Michael's useful book, Edmund Burke and the Critique of Political Radicalism (Oxford, 1980, p. 33)Google Scholar has a comment to make on Burke's view of the less than human characteristics of ‘scientised’ men, of whom Priestley would be an obvious example.

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7 The threat of the new knowledge to Burke's world is explored in a second article by the present author. The metaphor of intellectual space has most recently been applied to a seventeenth-century context by Shapin, Stephen and Schaffer, Simon, Leviathan and the Air Pump. Hobbes, Boyle and the Experimental Life, Princeton, N.J, 1985, pp. 332ff.Google Scholar

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26 A situation often explained by ‘the shadow of the great Isaac Newton’.

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28 Ibid.

29 Coleridge, ‘Essay on the grounds of government’ (first published in The Friend, 1809).Google ScholarThe Collected Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge (ed. Coburn, Kathleen) vol. iv (The Friend, vol. i, ed. Rooke, Barbara E.), London and Princeton, 1969, p. 188.Google Scholar

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56 For a general account of saltpetre production in France, see Multhauf, Robert P., ‘The French crash program for saltpetre production, 1776–94’, Technology and Culture,(1971), 12, pp. 163–181CrossRefGoogle Scholar (p. 174).

57 Mort aux Tyrans. Programme des Cours Révolutionnaires sur la Fabrication des Salpêtres, des Poudres et des Canons, Paris, An 2 [1793–1794].Google Scholar

58 Le Salpêtre Républicain.

59 Letter to a Noble Lord (1795)Google Scholar, Works, v, p. 143.Google Scholar Burke was incensed by the criticism of his recent government pension by the Duke of Bedford, who failed to appreciate the dangers of the Revolution.

60 Burke had used the same metaphor in 1791, speaking of the ‘untempered mortar’ holding together the revolutionary building (Speeches, London, 1816, vol. iv, p. 26).Google Scholar

61 Letter to a Noble Lord (1795)Google Scholar, Works, v, p. 143.Google Scholar

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67 Given the especial political disabilities of the Unitarians, it is hardly surprising that Priestley should have become an advocate of political change. The majority of Dissenters, however, were not Unitarians and many had little interest in politics.

68 Reflections, pp. 370, 371.Google ScholarThoughts on French Affairs in Everyman edition of Reflections, London, 1967, p. 293.Google Scholar Interestingly, it was Bailly who introduced the modern concept of a scientific revolution (e.g. ‘the Copernican revolution’) in 1785Google Scholar, Cohen, I. Bernard, Revolutions in Science, Cambridge, Mass., 1985, pp. 221–223.Google Scholar

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73 Regicide Peace, II, Works, v, p. 246.Google Scholar For a later statement of the harmful effects of philosophy on politics, brought to my attention by David Knight, see the 1817 letter of Coleridge to Liverpool, Lord: Letters of S.T. Coleridge, (ed. Griggs, E. L.), Oxford, 1959, vol. 4, pp. 757–763.Google Scholar

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80 Ibid., p. 105.

81 Ibid., p. 90.

82 Ibid., p. 345.

83 Payne, E. J. (ed.), Select Works of E. Burke, Oxford, 1898, vol. ii, p. 307Google Scholar, c.f. p. 332.

84 Reflections, p. 183.Google Scholar

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87 Ibid., p. 148.

88 Ibid., p. 207.

89 Ibid., pp. 151–215.

90 Ibid., p. 239. In 1795 Wilberforce complained in the House of Commons that it was not only French politics but ‘French philosophy’ that was being imported into Britain (Parliamentary History, vol. 32, col. 292). Political cartoonists also associated the French Revolution with ‘philosophers’, e.g., the allegory ‘Philosophy run mad’ (1793) and an unsigned print by Gillray portraying Fox as ‘A democrat—or reason and philosophy’, George, Mary Dorothy, English Political Caricature, 1793–1832, Oxford, 1959, vol. ii, pp. 1, 3.Google Scholar

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101 Letter to a Noble Lord, Works, v, p. 141.Google Scholar In a letter to Grenville, Lord in 1792Google Scholar Burke does speak of the English Jacobins. He mentions several French revolutionaries including Condorcet ‘and their Brethren, the Priestleys, the Coopers and the Watts’, Correspondence, vii, p. 177.Google ScholarWatt, James (1769–1848)Google Scholar, son of the engineer, had presented an address to the Jacobin club in Paris on 13 April 1792.

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106 Burke is comparing them to the early church fathers.

107 Ibid., p. 212.

108 Ibid., p. 213.

109 Ibid., p. 212.

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121 Letter to a Noble Lord, Works, v, p. 142.Google Scholar In modern times mice are still a favourite animal for medical experiments. In 1984 54.4% of such experiments were carried out on mice compared with only 0.6% on cats and dogs (New Scientist, No. 1505, 24 04 1986, p. 27).Google Scholar

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127 ‘It is like that of the principle of evil himself: incorporeal, pure, unmixed, dephlegmated, defecated evil’. Ibid. Notice the choice of adjectives taken from science.

128 A modern account is given in Cobban, Alfred, A History of Modern France, 3rd edn., Harmondsworth, Middx., 1963, i, p. 161.Google Scholar Burke nevertheless harboured a deep distrust of Marie Antoinette. Correspondence, vi, p. xvii.Google Scholar

129 Rights of Man, Part II (1792), loc. cit. (17), pp. 178–180.Google Scholar See also Weiser, David K., ‘The imagery of Burke's Reflections’, Studies on Burke and His Time, (1974–1975), 16, pp. 312–329Google Scholar (p. 312n).

130 Somerset, H. V. F. (ed.), A Notebook on Edmund Burke, Cambridge, 1957, p. 91.Google Scholar

131 Generation ‘is hid … not because it is dishonourable but because it is mysterious’, Ibid., p. 92.

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135 Reflections, p. 300.Google Scholar c.f. New Testament parallel in which sheep are separated out from goats, Matthew, xxv, 32.

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137 Ibid.

138 Bredvold, Louis I. and Ross, Ralph G. (eds), The Philosophy of Edmund Burke: a Selection of his Speeches and Writings, Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1960, p. 5.Google Scholar

139 Burke, speaks of ‘the severity of geometry’. Letter to a Member of the National Assembly, loc. cit. (68), p. 248.Google Scholar Several previous eighteenth-century writers had expressed reservations about the excessive claims of mathematics, e.g., Diderot, , De l'interpretation de la Nature (1754)Google Scholar, opening paragraphs.

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142 Ibid., p. 141.

143 Ibid., p. 276.

144 Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs, Works, iii, p. 82ff.Google Scholar

145 Reflections, p. 153.Google Scholar For an exegesis of this difficult passage, see Wilkins, Burleigh T., The Problem of Burke's Political Philosophy, Oxford, 1967, p. 178.Google Scholar

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147 Ibid., p. 286.

148 Ibid., p. 153.

149 Payne, E. J., op. cit. (83), p. 332.Google Scholar

150 Reflections, p. 296.Google Scholar

151 Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs, Works, iii, p. 16.Google Scholar

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153 Ibid., p. 285.

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155 Reflections, p. 286.Google Scholar

156 Burke discusses in some detail the system of elections and assemblies which he portrays as abstract and mathematical. Ibid., pp. 287–289.

157 C.f. letter from Burke, to François de Rivarol, Claude, 1 06 1791:Google Scholar ‘It is better to forget once for all the Encyclopédic and the whole body of Economists …’. (Correspondence, vi, p. 267.)Google Scholar J. J. Mounier pointed out that most economists, far from supporting the revolution, taught respect for property On the Influence Attributed to Philosophers …), London, 1801, pp. 24–25.Google Scholar

158 Reflections, p. 170.Google Scholar The attack on economics did not prevent Burke himself writing a small work on economics, posthumously published, Barrington, Donal, ‘Edmund Burke as an economist’, Economica, (1954), n.s. 21, pp. 252–258.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

159 Ibid., p. 299. We may recall that Tom Paine had been an exciseman.

160 Ibid., p. 174.

161 Ibid., p. 176.

162 Letter to a Noble Lord, Works, v, p. 114 (my italics).Google Scholar

163 Reflections, p. 95.Google Scholar

164 Thus the sun at the centre of the universe was compared to the King. William Harvey, court physician to Charles I, used this analogy as well as that between the heart and the monarchy, The Circulation of the Blood, (tr. Franklin, Kenneth J.), London, 1963, pp. 3, 108.Google Scholar

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166 Burke speaks of ‘the great primeval contract of eternal society … connecting the visible and invisible world according to a fixed compact sanctioned by the inviolable oath which holds all physical and moral natures, each in their appointed plan’. Reflections, p. 195.Google Scholar

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169 Reflections, p. 120.Google Scholar

170 Ibid., p. 196.

171 Ibid., p. 122.

172 Cameron, D., op. cit. (13).Google Scholar

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174 Letters on a Regicide Peace, I, Works, v, p. 153.Google Scholar

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177 Burke, speaks of ‘the principles of natural subordination’. Reflections, p. 372.Google Scholar

178 Ibid., p. 121.

179 Ibid., p. 128.

180 The best attempt to explain Burke's ideas on natural law is probably Stanlis, P., op. cit. (1).Google Scholar

181 Reflections, p. 120.Google Scholar

182 Thus Hobbes relates ‘natural law’ to man's self-preservation rather than to God. McNeilly, F. S., The anatomy of Leviathan, London, 1968, p. 183.Google Scholar

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184 Ibid. p. 92.

185 Ibid., p. 323.

186 Ibid., p. 138.

187 Ibid.

188 Ibid., p. 120.

189 Ibid.

190 Ibid., p. 150.

191 Ibid., p. 152.

192 Ibid., p. 122.

193 Ibid., p. 200.

194 Ibid., p. 195.

195 Burke speaks of exile into ‘the antagonistic world of madness, discord, vice, confusion and unavailing sorrow’.

196 Regicide Peace, IIGoogle Scholar, Works, v, p. 245.Google Scholar

197 Courtney, C. P., op. cit. (13), p. 152.Google Scholar

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199 Speech on the Impeachment of Warren Hastings (1788), Works, vii, p. 99.Google Scholar

200 Ibid.

201 Reflections, p. 224.Google Scholar

202 E.g. Ibid., pp. 360ff. Burke associates ‘the most desperate adventurers in philosophy and finance’.

203 Ibid., p. 359.

204 Lock, F. P., op. cit. (13), pp. 18–19.Google Scholar

205 Thoughts and Details on Scarcity (1795)Google Scholar, Works, v, p. 100.Google Scholar

206 The comment has recently been made that ‘one of the large unanswered questions is how Burke's economic theory is related to his political theory’, Gandy, and Stanlis, , op. cit. (1), p. 213.Google Scholar

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208 Ibid., p. 299.

209 Ibid., p. 300.

210 Ibid., p. 272.

211 For an introductory bibliography to the growing literature on classification see Knight, David, Ordering the World, London, 1981, pp. 207–209.Google Scholar

212 Elsewhere in the Reflections he uses the metaphor of an ‘ample collection of known classes, genera and species, which at present beautify the hortus siccus [i.e. collection of dried plants]’, ibid., pp. 95–96.

213 Annual Register, 1772, pp. 232–235 (232, my italics).Google Scholar For a view which contrasts the early and acceptable writing of Histories by Priestley with his later experimental career in pneumatic chemistry, see Crosland, Maurice, ‘Priestley Memorial Lecture: A practical perspective on Joseph Priestley as a pneumatic chemist’, B.J.H.S. (1983), 16, pp. 223–238CrossRefGoogle Scholar (231–232).

214 Although these powers may have been capable of being discovered for a long time, it was only in the eighteenth century that they began to be developed.

215 Reflections, p. 268.Google Scholar

216 Ibid., p. 271.

217 See, e.g., Jacobs, Margaret, The Newtonians and the English Revolution, 1689–1720, Hassocks, 1976.Google Scholar See also a critique of Jacobs, in Russell, Colin, Science and Social Change, 1700–1900, London, 1983, pp. 52ff.Google Scholar

218 Reflections, p. 276.Google Scholar

219 Kramnick, Isaac, ‘Eighteenth-century science and radical social theory: the case of Joseph Priestley's scientific liberalism’, Journal of British Studies, (1986), 25, pp. 1–30 (24).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

220 Reflections, p. 195.Google Scholar

221 Ibid., p. 283.

222 Different specialisms were identified in the regulations of the Paris Academy of Sciences, dating back to 1699 and were well accepted in eighteenth-century France.

223 Experiments and Observations on Natural Philosophy, Birmingham, 1779–1786, iii, pp. xvi–xvii.Google Scholar Priestley's claim to be applying scientific method to theology can hardly be accepted at face value. As has been pointed out, he often decided in advance what was ‘true Christianity’ and what were its corruptions. He then turned to history to find support. He did not consult his sources with an open mind. See Cragg, Gerald R., Reason and Authority in the Eighteenth Century, Cambridge, 1964, pp. 236–237.Google Scholar

224 Reflections, p. 183.Google Scholar

225 Willey, Basil, The Eighteenth-Century Background, London, 1940, p. 232.Google ScholarBrowne, Ray B., The Burke-Paine Controversy. Text and Criticism, New York, 1963, p. 147.Google Scholar

226 Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs, Works, iii, p. 79.Google Scholar

227 Montgomery, Robert (ed.), Edmund Burke: Being First Principles Selected from his Writings, London, 1853, p. 4.Google Scholar There is some discussion of Burke's scepticism in Canavan, Francis P., The Political Reason of Edmund Burke, Durham, N. C., 1960, pp. 33–34.Google Scholar

228 See Todd, William B., A bibliography of Edmund Burke, London, 1964Google Scholar, especially pp. 142ff.

229 Reflections, p. 268.Google Scholar A seventeenth-century parallel is provided by Henry Stubbes who, in his attack on the Royal Society, speaks of ‘Toyish Experiments’—quoted by Hunter, Michael, Science and Society in Restoration England, Cambridge, 1981, p. 151.Google Scholar It should be noted that no claim is made in this paper for the originality of Burke's ideas. He was all the more influential because in many cases he is doing no more than reminding his audience of their prejudices.