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Benjamin Franklin, Civic Scientist
Guinnessy writes "Neal Lane, the ex-science advisor to President Clinton, has written an article in Physics Today magazine, that explains why he thinks Benjamin Franklin, was an early American prototype of a civic scientist, i.e. someone who would 'probably address many of today's concerns with wisdom, practicality, and a deep sense of civic responsibility.' Ironically the same issue has an example of a modern day civic scientist, a profile of Richard Meserve, a physicist who became a lawyer. Interesting stuff."
Slow news day again.
Not so bad, I've seen worse.
I'm currently reading this book, and so far I'm not that impressed. You may as well read Benjamin Franklin's autobiography. It has just as much insight, with all of the whit. He was a nut. I hope I can be 1/4th the nut he was.
A programmer is a machine for converting coffee into code.
And it would during.
Dual degrees in science and law is common in Australia where most universities force undergraduates to take a combined law degree, ie Science/Law, Arts/Law, Commerce (or Economics)/Law etc.
a world in progress...
Franklin's autobiography makes for fascinating reading.
"If you would not be forgotten as soon as you are dead & rotten, either write things worth reading, or do things worth the writing" - Ben Franklin
I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate.
"There should me no comma before *either* 'that' or 'was an early'."
Um, yeah. That should say "There should be..." in the last sentence. Figures it's a grammar post that I make a typo in...
"He's not quite dead..."
Either your sources are bad or mine are out of date; the websites of CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News all say he's in critical condition.
There should me no comma before *either* 'that' or 'was an early'.
;)
Curse of the Grammer Nazis, dude. Get used to it. The Karma police will be along shortly.
Soko
"Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm." - Anonymous
From the article he makes Ben Franlkin sound like some sort of savior who could come foreward from the past and save us all. Bringing the scientists in congress together in a bipartisan manner to discuss science and technology... How many scientists are there in congress? And how likely is it that they could actually sit down and work together on anything, especially technology (They would simply fight over which states got which grants for scientific study) Town hall meetings all across american to bring up important issues... Guess this guy never read "Bowling Alone" all about Americans lack of interest and involvement in all things ranging from bowling leagues to the PTA to politics, The author creates a way oversimplified view of politics and of Ben Franklin.
If Mr. EvanED was paid to post comments on Slashdot, he'd certainly be fired now.
I'm just glad to be reading something about a great man instead of a criminal, for once.
Can you believe the onion ran this this week?
http://www.theonion.com/3938/opinion1.html
That is horrible. There's only one thing to say at a time like this - GO GET EM TIGER! ROY IS ON TEH SPOKE!!!~`1
There are no karma whores, only moderation johns
Spin doctors or busy bodies.
This story is really not news for nerds..
At one time, we had high-minded intellectuals running this country. Ones with vision and foresight and knowledge and education. Where are they today? We've got a president who is, at best, of averge intelligence, and whose greatest strength is something as plebian as business. I doubt that people like the founding fathers aren't around today --- I don't think this world has gone that far done the shit-hole just yet. But where are they hiding? Are they staying out of public service just because they're so damn disgusted by the whole system? Are we as a society doing something that are actively keeping these people out?
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Why should there be an American prototype of a civic scientist. Surely many of the Greek thinkers, (Aristotle and Plato in particular) paved the way for this sort of thinking. Franklin was undoubtly a brilliant man but I would hardly call him a prototype.
Its an interesting article though I would consider it somewhat naive. The majority of people dont care about science. Once the inventions and breakthroughs keep coming and their lives are made easier, safer etc. they will just say isn't science wonderful and carry on with their daily lives.
As for the political aspects I think (conspiracy theory here) that the political and legal systems are deliberately being made as obtuse as possible to prevent access by the public. Supposedly we get transparent government which basically means they might hold the odd, ultimately meaningless inquiry every now and then. Witness the current WMD fiasco for a classic example of political spin, distortion of facts and politicians doing as they please. The legal system in particular has been made ridiculously complex to the detriment of justice and the embellishment of lawyers.
It would be good if we could get more scientists, or engineers for that matter into political positions. They would bring a more balanced and rational perspective to many of the issues facing society today. Unfortunately politics is the art of compromise and we are all well aware what happens when we start to compromise on engineering and scientific projects (recent shuttle furore anyone). Scientists and Engineers are no more immune from this than politicians.
Again I think its an interesting article but naive to think that a visionary scientist, or even a bunch of scientists would somehow radically change our political and social landscape. Our current systems are a little bit too entrenched.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
I've also heard that he fucked young boys, and was involved with infamous rake's clubs while in England. However, are these charges real, or just an urban legend?
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
Can we have things that at least *approach* gramatical correctness in the stories?
Can we also have sentences free of conceptual muddiness? Saying "Benjamin Franklin was an early American prototype of a civic scientist" is like saying "the Model T was an early American prototype of a car". It seems a lot more meaningful to say that Benjamin Franklin was a civic scientist, and the Model T was a car. Otherwise, the sentence suggests a lot of bias towards the present.
This story reeks of politics. It has nothing to do with science unless you're Euro-trash.
I agree here too. This continues in this post with the "probably address many of today's concerns with wisdom, practicality, and a deep sense of civic responsibility" definition. First, this is again biased toward the present ("many of *today's concerns"). Second, what's with the "probably"?
I would love to be living in a society that was led by our greatest artisons and scientists such as Franklin, such a society would bring peace and fulfillment just by being in the environment created by it. Look at how the people in power influence us now, The front page of the newspapper never shows good news, prime-time news stories are never about a fireman saving a cat from a tree or anything else good and heart warming. We are born and raised into depressive and supressive thinking, if we try to think "outside of the box" we are thought of as insane or disturbed, even those people who are thinking beyond the norm of what we are today probably could not begin to conceive what would have been if polotics werent running this country.
Imagine a society where rather than a political agenda (is it re-election time? etc..), we are working towards the embetterment of human kind, thinking of our fellow humans rather than our pocketbooks becoming fatter...
I'm sure that this system would never work though. Who would handle the politicians from the rest of the world, it's a nice vision to have though, if ever we could get over our petty differences and live in this society it would truely be a great step forward for all of us.
______ Eagles may fly but monkeys don't get sucked into jet engines.
Where are the modern civic scientists? How come they are not important government officials any more?
And of course Karl Marx was the ultimate civic scientist.
On a more practical level i quess that Josif Stalin was the ultimate civic engineer. He used to even get into tractor production and make little changes to the blueprints. The ultimate bureaucrat. Although i couldn't really call him a scientist, just an engineer/bureaucrat.
I think that we could forget about Marx now, what we really need is a new John Maynard Keynes. If socialism doesn't work, well, corporate welfare and unregulated markets suck too.
No the page is not valid HTML there are 93 errors.
Win a signed Stephen Carpenter ESP Guitar from the Deftones: http://def-tag.com/?r=0008781
Gout is caused by urea building up and crystallizing, particularly in areas of poor circulation (lower extremitites, etc.). It can be quite painful.
The first modern example that comes to mind is the team at Google in that they have done basic research and applied that result for the common good on a mass scale.
Perhaps one of the most likely modern-day candidates might be Linus Torvalds....
He's helped create a marvel of technology and engineering, entirely for the public benefit...
The great people of yesteryear still exist today... they just aren't in public office.
Remember that Ben F was a rebel - the "powers that be" at the time was the British govt.
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
Ironically the same issue has an example of a modern day civic scientist, a profile of Richard Meserve, a physicist who became a lawyer.
I don't think this is irony (or even a coincidence), I think it was planned, magazines generally have two or three themes for each issue, and this one had the theme of "civic scientists".
And no, it's not ironic that the poster used the word "ironically" incorrectly either.
stop posting on the Internet late at night on a friday, says the guy who posted on the Internet late at night on a friday
I realize this is a troll, but I'm getting sick of the slashdot stereotype.
After spending all week working hard at a business I've started with a partner, and all week (evenings) playing with my 3 kids and flirting with my wife (after 3 kids you don't have sex anymore, you just flirt), I'm relaxing. I'm looking forward to cleaning up the yard tomorrow hoping to chase off the field mouse that has recently arrived, and to prepare the yard for winter. It's going to be a long, hard weekend, and I'm happy to relax on a Friday night and read slashdot.
Like what I said? You might like my music
you suffer from historical myopia.
reinterpretations and the human tendency to vilify/ deify others warps perceptions of time and places past
people always long for something long ago, forgetting how it was just as sucky as it is now at least
example? some of us might go "damn to be a teenager again, what glorious years of my life"
truth? your teenage years were some of your most awkward, painful times in existence
this is true for everyone
true of human nature
when you look at the founding fathers, you turn them into some sort of minor religous saints
they did wonderful things, but don't forget they were human beings
throughout time and place, human nature never changes. so while the founding fathers did great things, they also did bad things (jefferson and his slaves, etc.), and they also did stupid things (hamilton and his burr duel, etc.).
they were human beings: good, bad, and ugly, just like all of us.
don't make them out to be demigods.
don't suffer from historical myopia.
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
The almanac is the legacy of Franklin and it was nothing but a collection of sayings directed towards simple-minded, conservative, church going farmers that were often misleading and which he himself did not follow by any means.
The one that particularly pisses me off is "Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, welathy and wise."
It is a fact that this is completely contrary to the sleep requirements of human beings. Here was can see a good example of where Franklin was not a scientist at all, his primary focus was on coining, or borrowing and touching up, aphorisms that would appeal the lifestyle of a gullible, poorly educated rural audiance.
Researchers who actually study sleep cycles rather than just making up sayings for the popular press have found that the human sleep cycle tends towards adding an hour or so of time to each day so that the time a person becomes tired and is properly prepared to sleep is constantly changing relative to the previous night's sleep.
Early to bed and early to rise most likely leads to a kind of mental depression from inadequate sleep that infects the majority of nine to fivers and no doubt may partly account for American's political apathy, obsesity and need to buy products like viagra. And for what? So this shady book publisher can be remembered as an icon of American scientific prowess?
where it's Saturday afternoon, you insensitive clod.
My father actually had it, but now there is medication for it. In that time though, no one knew why it happened. It went away after a while for Franklin though.
/. is being injured seriously by the growing number of absurd entries such as this. Why are they allowed to continue online? Moderators should have the power to delete this harmful material and they should exercise it.
Those who trade freedom for security will soon have neither.
Exactly how is that off topic?
I hear that the Internet is actually a global thing.
FYI I'm reading this on a Saturday night at around 9pm. You are a bit behind the times mate.
Hmm, if you mean go out and get drunk - I've done it many times.
...not ironic.
Have you ever noticed that people who write about "science" in the abstract never seem to have a clue about what science is? Read this piece of humanities trash. Nothing about observation, theory or methodology. Lots about politics and education.
It almost comes off as a political mad-lib where the key words included "science" and "franklin" and "civic".
I make decision with precision
Lost inside this manned collision
Just to see that what is to be
Perfectly my fantasy
I came to know with now dismay
That in this world we all must pay
Pay to write, pay to play
Pay to cum, pay to fight
And all in time,
With just our minds
We soon will find
What's left behind
Not long ago when things were slow
We all got by with what we know
The end is near. Hearts filled with fear
Don't want to listen to what they hear
And so it's now we choose to fight
To stick up for our bloody right
The right to sing, the right to dance
The right is ours... We'll take the chance
A peace together
A piece apart
A piece of wisdom
From our hearts
Among scientists without a formal education, no doubt Faraday was the greatest, he was as good as the best formally educated scientists such as Galileo, Newton, Einstein. Franklin was not bad either, but he could not be compared with Faraday.
Among scientists without a formal education, Zeldovich from Russia was one of the greatests. Thanks to communism he eventually got a formal education, too; first he became a famous scientist and then got his PhD. As usual under communist rule, he got it for free; he did not pay a penny for his studies!
Was he greater than Franklin? (I doubt it)
Outstanding physicist and politician from XVII century Germany, he carried the famous experiment with Macdeburg half-spheres. Civic scientist, he was Faradays equal, and deserves the same credit.
Faraday did not invent anything, just improved Franklin's invention, electricity.
All Germans are!
He was a Da Vinci of the 20th century!.
The square wheel, of course.
Bengamin is sendin' sin into a pleasure bin. I think that this is how the "youngin's" are talking thes days. If you don't think on the same wavelength, I can't understand either you or your ilk.
This seems to be flamebait. The almanac was not his scientific legacy and wasn't even written with any pretence of contributing to science. Judging Franklin as a scientist on the basis of the almanac is like judging Newton on the basis of his theological writings.
The scientific legacy of Franklin was the "single fluid" theory of electricity. He was the first to hypothesize that electricity was a single conserved "fluid" instead of two fluids (corresponding to + and -). In fact, it was this hypothesis that gave us + (an excess of fluid) and - (a lack of fluid). After learning about electrons, we now know that he got the signs wrong. But it's hard to see how an 18th century experiment could have determined that. It seems to me that this is a pretty enormous scientific contribution. He wasn't Faraday or Maxwell, but this is probably the single most important contribution to understanding electricity made in the 18th century.
A physicist that became a lawyer
How proud his mother must be. Her son is the lowest form of life on earth.
How small a thought it takes to fill a whole life
I think that the late Carl Sagan should be a more exemplary choice of a "Civic Scientist".
For those among the slashdot readership who are not wholly familiar with Dr. Sagan's
TV series (Cosmos); it's worth buying on DVD cold.
He's written a great many books for the layperson. The last of which, Billions and Billions, approach
subjects such as religion, politics, environmental concerns, family planning, etc.
He was a member of NORML, frequently spoke out against nuclear weapons production,
and was a diehard liberal to his last day.
-jcw
Bill Clinton didn't write the article.
Clear, Dark Skies
... fear was not a factor for Ben ;)
Out of interest, the venerable man himself premiered on New Zealand television tonight, in the 100th episode of Southpark... coincidence?
Whups! Missed the line where it said it was his science advisor and not Bill himself.
Gorkman
1709 Hawksbee publishes Physico-Mechanical Experiments on Various Subjects
1729 Static electricity is said to be transferred through substances, especially metals
1733 Du Fay finds that there are two types of electric charges, and that unlike charges attract while like charges repel
1745 The Leyden Jar is invented by Kleist and van Musschenbroek for storing electric charge
**Leyden Jar - The first device used to store electricity because it was believed that electricity was a fluid ("Leyden").
1766 Joseph Priestley proposes the inverse square law for electric charges (Biggus, "Electricity").*Kuhn 53-56. (For more on Priestley, see the Chemistry Timeline.)
1772 "An Attempt to Explain some of the Principal Phenomena of Electricity, by Means of an Elastic Fluid," is published by Henry Cavendish
1777 Coulomb's research elaborates on the relationship between electricity and magnetism
1783 Volta invents the condenser
1785 Coulomb invents the torsion balance, which measures the force given off by electrical charges
Where's this original contribution by Franklin again?
I wonder, does Richard Meserve also have a lifetime guest-pass/membership at the Hellfire Club? (Run by Franklin's friend Sir Francis Dashwood.) There was a lot more to Franklin than the sanitized popular "civic" version of history. (But isn't there always?)
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Lefties pretending that they own Benjamin Franklin.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
It's almost scary how appropriate that quote is today...
CC-licensed translations of Japanese fiction: http://tonygonz.blogspot.com/
Like a popular CNN news anchor once coyly said. America's founding fathers wouldn't have had a chance today. They'd be either sitting on death row or in a gutter.
Liability and quota's.
I work in Philadelphia.. in the historial area. Reminders and memorials of Franklin are everywhere. Sometime ago, I found myself interested in this man who seemed facinated and involved with seemingly every aspect of his time. He always had an opinion and as the article pointed out, was willing to change his mind. He was truly beloved by his contemporaries - when he died in 1790, his funeral was a testament to the regard he was held - in all diciplines of his day.
Of course we can focus on a single aspect of his interests and be impressed (they are after all of his time), but things like he was a prolific, practical inventor but never sought a patent.. he argued (unsucessfully) for an anti-slavery clause to the constitution.. he was a nerd with great social skills.. he was first and foremost a printer and communicator; I'm sure he would be quite pleased with OSS and the internet.
In the political/civic arena, his wisdom and participation was sought after. Yes, everyone loves to quote "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." but his contribution to the design of the great seal of the US included the motto "Rebellion to Tyrants is Obedience to God." Go figure. His son was Governor of New Jersey and a loyalist to King George.
The liberty bell is being moved on Oct 9th!
Just out of curiousity: why do you think the group of people who wold vote for the "electrons as particles" theory of the atom cannot include liberals?
1733 Du Fay finds that there are two types of electric charges, and that unlike charges attract while like charges repel
1745 The Leyden Jar is invented by Kleist and van Musschenbroek for storing electric charge
**Leyden Jar - The first device used to store electricity because it was believed that electricity was a fluid ("Leyden").
Your chronology completely ignores the debate between proponents of the two fluid theory and the one fluid theory. Du Fay was a proponent of the two fluid theory, as your quote suggests. A quick google search turned up the following more detailed chronology:Electrostatics which does discuss Franklin's contributions.
I will grant you that Priestly and Coulomb's work was earlier than I remembered. But Franklin's work was still among the most significant contributions to understanding of electricity during the 18th century.
...and a particularly poor, lame-ass troll, at that. I guess we can't expect much on the weekends.
It amuses me that a Clinton aid picks an alcoholic womanizer as a model citizen scientist.
#-#
Ad Astra Per Aspera
A rough road leads to the stars
Franklin's experiment with electricity is what is called a "critical experiment." One that can only be explained by one system of hypotheses and cannot be explained in another. What the kite experiment was set to determine: was electricity a fluid or was it a particle? Quantum mechanics states it is both, but at the time of the experiment, duality was not allowed (its that Aristotelean myth of the Law of the Excluded Middle).
He's helped create a marvel of technology and engineering, entirely for the public benefit.
That is quite spin heavy and revisionist, ironic given the original topic.
Linux is no marvel of technology, it is a marvel of social interaction. Linux is yet another re-implementation of Unix made by folks studying previous implementations. That said it is likely to become the dominant Unix environment[1] not for technical or engineering reasons but for social reasons. The only revolutionary thing about Linux is the distribution model, a GPL'd operating system freely available over the internet. That was new and different ten years ago, Unix running on a PC was not.
[1] Technically Mac OS X will probably become the dominant Unix environment but I'll give this one to Linux anyway since most Mac users won't know what Unix is and that they have it. Personally I think this makes Mac OS X the perfect desktop Unix.
Does that mean this is the guy responsible for spending billions of dollars to find out that power lines don't cause cancer?
- The Karma police will be along shortly.
Really, the emphasis police are about to nab you. You should realize that the sentence should read:Perhaps, but unlike the founding fathers, this president never owned other people as slaves. Perhaps intellectualism and high-mindedness are not so great as some would have it.
Put another way, he's neither strong enough to handle the responsibilities nor competent enough forge a path others could follow.
The terms positive and negative charge are from Benjamin Franklin.
"Those who give up their freedoms for temporary karma deserve neither freedom nor karma" -- BFF
After all, it takes Honda engineers to make a Civic, which would be over a century ahead of his time. The best he could be would be a General Motors scientist.
Finally stopped blaming the stork for those little surprises, eh?
My third is just today six months old. We're in about the same boat as you.
See what I've been reading.