This 2024/2025 season marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of the EST/Sloan Project, the joint initiative between the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and the Ensemble Studio Theatre “designed to stimulate artists to create credible and compelling work exploring the worlds of science and technology and to challenge the existing stereotypes of scientists and engineers in the popular imagination.” In that spirit, we offer this essay on the historical and scientific context of FRANKLINLAND the Fall 2024 Mainstage Production of the EST/Sloan Project. FRANKLINLAND, written by Lloyd Suh and directed by Chika Ike, begins previews at EST on October 9 and runs through November 3. You can purchase tickets here.
“He Snatched Lightning from the Sky, and the Scepter from Tyrants”
Benjamin Franklin’s Embrace of Science and the Rights of Humankind
By Philip Dray, author of Stealing God’s Thunder: Benjamin Franklin’s Lightning Rod and the Invention of America
On one of his journeys to England, the ship on which Benjamin Franklin was sailing became lost in the fog for several hours before managing to land safely. His relieved fellow passengers sought to take up a collection to build a shrine of thanksgiving but Franklin objected, insisting a lighthouse would be far more appropriate.
Throughout his life (1706-1790), Franklin’s pragmatism was brought to bear in many such situations. Born in Boston, where he apprenticed for his older brother James’s newspaper, he moved to Philadelphia as a young man and made a name for himself as a printer, publisher and community steward. He organized a young men’s civic leadership group, and lent his support to libraries, fire departments, philosophical societies, as well as the need for unity among the American colonies. Known for his wise and witty almanacs, he also pursued horticultural and scientific experiments.
Franklin stove (c.1795) Courtesy of Metropolitan Museum of Art Rogers Fund / Creative Commons CC0 1.0
His curiosity was most piqued by natural systems – wind, magnetism, heat, electricity – forces that contained energy but no mass. When he noticed that the warmth generated by an open fireplace tended to “scorch” those individuals seated close by but left others in the drafty cold, his answer, one of his first inventions, was a stove that stood away from the wall and with its multiple surface areas warmed an entire room, while its closeable doors meant its fire required less fuel.
Franklin did not invent electricity – its mysteries had been noted since Antiquity -- however his tabletop inquiries enabled him to describe how it worked. His letters on the subject were published by the Royal Society in London and led to his initial worldwide renown. Most notable was his 1752 outdoor experiment with kite and key, in which he proved that the atmosphere becomes electrified at the approach of a thunderstorm. Having established that thunder and lightning are natural phenomena, he proceeded to invent a means of protection, the lightning rod, a metal contraption that, affixed to the roof of a dwelling and grounded in the earth, conducts lightning’s powerful electrical charge away from inhabitants and property.
The lightning rod which still tops the dome of the Maryland State House in Annapolis was the largest Franklin lightning rod (28 feet) ever built for a public building during Franklin’s lifetime. Photo courtesy of Acroterion / Creative Commons 4.0
Franklin’s simple rooftop device was a cultural turning point, toppling the long-held superstition that thunderbolts were weapons of divine anger and retribution to which humans could only cower in fear. The image of Franklin, the humble American printer and publisher who “stole God’s thunder” and thus called into question the heavenly powers of earthly kings, would make him a much-admired scientific and political figure of the dawning revolutionary age. “He Snatched Lightning from the Sky, and the Scepter from Tyrants,” it was said of Franklin’s twin fields of endeavor.
Any full account of Franklin’s science must cite the invention of which he was most proud: bifocals. When on diplomatic assignment in France he often attended dinner parties where he needed to see clearly the lips and faces, and even the hand gestures, of those with whom he conversed, as his mastery of French was adequate at best. At the same time, a lover of good food, he wanted to see what was on his plate. Returning in frustration to his quarters after one such affair, where he’d had to continually shift between two different eyeglasses, he disassembled several pair and using adhesive brought the upper and lower lenses together to form a dual lens. Now, by merely raising and lowering his gaze, he could keep an eye on his meal and at the same time know what his dinner companions, or adversaries, were saying.
Franklin characteristically never sought to patent any of his creations, considering the practical solutions he devised so inevitable they could not possibly “belong” to him or to any person. Such generosity of spirit reflected his allegiance to what would become known as the Scientific Method, an idea that had emerged from the Newtonian 17th century, that the search for scientific knowledge is open-ended, and functions best as a process in which hypotheses give way to experimentation, leading to better hypotheses, improved theories and conclusions, in an ongoing quest for truth.
Benjamin Franklin (1785) by Charles Willson Peale. The only known portrait of Franklin wearing bifocals. In the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts / Public Domain.
His interest in bettering human affairs was thus inspired by his and the late 18th century’s belief in the powers of experimentation and reason. The Declaration of Independence of 1776, the founding document of arguably the Enlightenment’s most ambitious invention, the United States of America, underscored that “the laws of nature, and of nature’s God” (an echo of Isaac Newton’s “laws of gravity”) provided a moral basis for the safeguarding of humanity’s right to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” and held that such rights are inherent to humankind, and not endowed by any monarch or divinity. Where Thomas Jefferson, the document’s youthful author, referred to the principles of human equality as “sacred and undeniable,” Franklin suggested the words be changed to say that such truths are “self-evident,” the latter a phrase derived from Newtonian science.
A nation governed by its people, however, was an exceedingly novel concept, and it was far from certain what form it would take or how long it could survive. When the Constitutional Convention completed its work in September 1787 after four months of arduous deliberation, a Philadelphia acquaintance named Elizabeth Powell accosted Franklin as the delegates departed Independence Hall. “Doctor,” she demanded, “what do we have, a monarchy or a republic?”
“A republic,” Franklin famously replied, “if you can keep it.” For in approving the Constitution he had worried that even the best-intentioned experiment in self-rule might fall prey to corruption; and in the final years of his life, regretful that slavery persisted in North America, aligned himself with a group of Quaker abolitionists vehemently opposed to the institution.
Franklin was fascinated by what later scholars would call “population studies,” and liked to prognosticate on the future growth of the United States, with, he’d be pleased to know, a surprising degree of accuracy. Doubtless he’d be gratified to see that the nation he helped found also became and continues to be a place known for research, innovation and the openness to new ideas.
About the Author: Philip Dray is the author of several books about the cultural and political history of the United States, including Stealing God’s Thunder: Benjamin Franklin’s Lightning Rod and the Invention of America; Capitol Men: The Story of Reconstruction Through the Lives of the First Black Congressmen; and At the Hands of Persons Unknown: The Lynching of Black America. He teaches in the Journalism + Design Department at Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts at The New School and will be joining a panel discussion about FRANKLINLAND after the October 26 matinee performance.