190 Heilbron
natural philosophy if not to scientifi c farming or the relief of the poor.
Among its fi rst professors were Thomas Young, re- inventor of the wave
theory of light, and Humphry Davy, who isolated sodium and potassium
via electrolysis and invented the miner’s safety lamp.^45
The same sort of rational cut- and- try that made scientifi c agriculture
underpinned the inventions of the group living around Birmingham who
called themselves the Lunar Society because they met when the full moon
illuminated their travels. The best known of the productions of the group
was James Watt’s steam engine. Watt invented its principle in 1765, ex-
perimented on steam according to the standards he had learned by talk-
ing with the professor of chemistry at Glasgow, Joseph Black, and devel-
oped a prototype in line with suggestions from members of the Lunar
Society. Like Watt, the society’s organizer, Matthew Boulton, had made
philosophical instruments (thermometers and electrical apparatus) and
designed steam engines. Unlike Watt, Boulton had a factory, which, in
1775, had reached the industrial equivalent of a Norfolk model farm, and
where, once perfected, Watt’s engines could be made. Manufacture began
around 1780.
The lunar group included several other philosophical artists: the phy-
sician Erasmus Darwin and a landed gentleman, Richard Lovell Edge-
worth, both of whom dabbled in steam engines, scientifi c instruments,
agricultural implements and materials, and balloons—that is, all the high-
tech sectors of the day; Josiah Wedgwood, whose knowledge of instru-
ments, chemistry, and experimental technique made a pottery famous
throughout Europe; and James Keir, a partner of Watt’s, who translated
Macquer’s Dictionary of chemistry into English. Keir enriched the work with
a treatise on the gas types, in which for the fi rst time (so he claimed)
“this branch of experimental philosophy” was set forth systematically; in
contrast to chemistry proper, which he rated “little more than a collec-
tion of facts... not yet capable of synthetic or analytic modes of expla-
nation.” In 1775, the greatest of all gas detectors, Joseph Priestley, then
already famous for his work and books on electricity, optics, and pneu-
matics, moved into the neighborhood to teach at a dissenting academy
and joined the group. All these gentlemen—Boulton, Edgeworth, Keir,
Priestley, Watt, and Wedgwood—continued to experiment with heat, elec-
tricity, and gases and to send reports of their fi ndings to the Royal Society,
of which all were members.^46
Until the suppression of the Society of Jesus, its schools dominated
secondary education in Italy, France, southern Germany, and Austria. The
larger of these institutions offered instruction at the same level as uni-
versities. The pedagogues of the order included many prominent math-