mathematics and philosophy.”^10 Instead of seminary, Priestley attended
Daventry Academy, a school for Dissenters, and there seems little doubt
that his start as an outsider prepared his mind for thinking differently.
Priestley supported himself as a tutor to wealthy families in the decades
following his formal education. Like Robert Boyle a century before,
Priestley spent a great deal of time thinking about the clockwork universe,
tinkering with electricity, plants, minerals, and air. He made regular trips
to London, interacting with the cognoscenti, including the American
genius Benjamin Franklin, who would become a lifelong friend. Priestley
became a member of the Royal Society in 1766 following a series of
experiments on electricity, and this exposed him to Society members’
presentations, their experimental methods and the tools of the trade of
scientific investigation.
How does air work? What is it made of? If you were a hobbyist scientist
in the 18th century, how would you deconstruct the meaning of your
respirations? Consider your breath—why does air rush into your chest
during your animal desire to breathe? Dear Reader—follow my orders as
an experiment—draw in a large breath, fill your lungs to the maximum,
and hold it. Before reading the preceding sentences, you were completely
unaware of your respirations, but I want you to stop breathing and think
about air. Do it now.
When you can’t possibly hold that big gulp of air any more, blow it all
out. I mean all your air, comprehensively emptying your lungs. Now stop
breathing. How long can you last? Twenty seconds? Two minutes? Why
must you breathe? What is actually being accomplished during your
inhalations and exhalations? What is the composition of air and why must
we feast on it?
Prior to the Royal Society’s exploration of the structure of air, there was
almost no way to think about it as anything but a homogenous, invisible
element of uncertain function. Ancient Greek theories about the vitality of
air were no longer satisfactory—the new age of experimentation mandated
that air itself be tested. The only way to evaluate air was to isolate it, and
the apparatus of choice among scientific detectives was a bell jar made of
clear glass; the airtight vestibule was often positioned over a shallow pool
of water or mercury, trapping the air inside for experimentation. Some of
the earliest experiments by the newfangled scientists of the Royal Society
involved the glass bell jar and a vacuum pump. If a small bird was placed
marcin
(Marcin)
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