History 138 - Class 5

History 138: Science in the U.S.

Class 5 (9/4)
Infrastructure and governance
(There is no Class 4.)

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Outline

Preconditions for scientific achievement
Leisure and resources
Communication and organization

Local institutions

The natural history network
(Excursus: European natural history interests)

Scientific societies
(And their offshoots: journals)

Colleges
    How friendly were the colleges?
    Educating physicians
    Natural philosophy
    Professors pursuing science?

Public support
Mechanisms of encouragement
The power and competencies of government
Example: the Constitution (1787)

Names and Terms

Primary	Secondary
Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) American Philosophical Society Royal Society of London Paris Academy of Sciences Harvard College (fd. 1636) Constitution (1787) Federalist-Antifederalist debates patent elastic clauses	John Adams (1735–1826) Declaration of Independence (1776) Confederation (1781)

Assignment

John Adams, "Winthrop's Lectures on Experimental Philosophy," in The Earliest Diary of John Adams, ed. L.H. Butterfield, Wendell D. Garrett, and Marc Friedlaender (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1966), 60-64.

Did Franklin and Professor Winthrop have the same idea of natural philosophy?
How do you imagine Winthrop lecturing? What apparatus might he have had at hand?
What were the students supposed to get from the lectures?

United States Constitution (1787), Article I, Section 8 [not for a reading response paper]

What clauses could be used to justify federal support for scientific work?
What sorts of things are missing: what is Congress not directed to do?
(For the poli sci majors: are there other parts of the Constitution we should be looking at?)