REVOLUTIONS have always forged intellectual firebrands. Look at the first three American presidents, each of whom was a distinguished revolutionary and a citizen scientist. George Washington joined the American Philosophical Society and experimented with crops on his plantation; John Adams founded the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; and Thomas Jefferson’s scientific achievements, in particular in agriculture and palaeontology, are the stuff of legend. As children of the Enlightenment, they believed that humanity could build a better world through science and political reform.
Benjamin Franklin was different. He was not a child of the Enlightenment; he was its father.
When…
