Enlightened Pursuits: Science and Civic Culture in Anglo-America, 1730-1760

Michael Benjamin Guenther

doi:https://doi.org/10.21985/N20N02

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Enlightened Pursuits: Science and Civic Culture in Anglo-America, 1730-1760

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This study explores how the world of popular science helped forge a new civic culture during the tumultuous decades of the mid-eighteenth century. I trace the activities of a wide cast of characters in both England and America, revealing the contours of a tightly knit community of scientists, merchants, doctors, landed gentlemen, ministers, craftsmen, and entrepreneurs, whose collaboration in scientific projects made "improvement" a cultural imperative of the age. By the 1740s, I argue, the realm of science-based improvement had emerged as a critical meeting ground for those who sought to bring greater cohesion and prosperity to the British empire at a time when society appeared to be splintering into religious and political factions. Over the course of several decades, these campaigns to promote useful knowledge carved out new civic arenas in which individuals could translate abstract notions of patriotism, collaboration, and self-improvement into a program of concerted action. My dissertation examines how popular science became, in many respects, an alternative to traditional politics--a new way of pursuing the public good that revolved around experimentation and the diffusion of useful knowledge, voluntary associations and networks of exchange, sociability and mutual improvement, patriotism and projects. And I investigate how this mindset led to the formation of agricultural clubs, botanical gardens, hospitals, philosophical societies, and a host of practical projects that encouraged scientific exchange and experimentation as a way of fostering both moral and material progress. The associational world of science offered opportunities to bring diverse groups together, to encourage new modes of civic action that could heal the fractured nature of society while advancing such important fields as agriculture, manufacturing, navigation, transportation, and public health. This study explores, then, how these wide ranging activities formed the basis of a new civic culture that transformed key dimensions of public life on both sides of the Atlantic.

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