A Most Amazing Scene of Wonders: Electricity And Enlightenment in Early America

by Delbourgo, James

• ISBN13: 9780674022997
• ISBN10: 0674022998
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2006-10-15
• Publisher: Harvard Univ Pr

Summary

Benjamin Franklin's invention of the lightning rod is the founding fable of American science, but Franklin was only one of many early Americans fascinated by electricity. As a dramatically new physical experience, electricity amazed those who dared to tame the lightning and set it coursing through their own bodies. Thanks to its technological and medical utility, but also its surprising ability to defy rational experimental mastery, electricity was a powerful experience of enlightenment, at once social, intellectual, and spiritual. In this compelling book, James Delbourgo moves beyond Franklin to trace the path of electricity through early American culture, exploring how the relationship between human, natural, and divine powers was understood in the eighteenth century. By examining the lives and visions of natural philosophers, spectacular showmen, religious preachers, and medical therapists, he shows how electrical experiences of wonder, terror, and awe were connected to a broad array of cultural concerns that defined the American Enlightenment. The history of lightning rods, electrical demonstrations, electric eels, and medical electricity reveals how early American science, medicine, and technology were shaped by a culture of commercial performance, evangelical religion, and republican politics from mid-century to the early republic. The first book to situate early American experimental science in the context of a transatlantic public sphere, A Most Amazing Scene of Wonders offers a captivating view of the origins of American science and the cultural meaning of the American Enlightenment. In a story of shocks and sparks from New England to the Caribbean, Delbourgo brilliantly illuminates a revolutionary New World of wonder.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	ix
Introduction: Seizing the Lightning	1	(13)
1 Atlantic Circuits	14	(36)
2 Lightning Rods and the Direction of Nature	50	(37)
3 Wonderful Recreations	87	(42)
4 Electrical Politics and Political Electricity	129	(36)
5 How to Handle an Electric Eel	165	(35)
6 Electrical Humanitarianism	200	(39)
7 Electricity as Common Sense	239	(39)
Conclusion: What Is American Enlightenment?	278	(7)
Notes	285	(70)
Illustration Sources	355	(2)
Acknowledgments	357	(2)
Index	359