Benjamin Silliman, 1779-1864, Pathfinder in American Science by John F. Fulton; Elizabeth H.Thomson; The Early Work of Willard Gibbs in Applied Mechanics, Comprising the Text of HisHitherto Unpublished Ph.D. Thesis and Accounts of His Mechanical Inventions by WillardGibbs; Lynde Phelps Wheeler; Everett Oyler Waters; Samuel William Dudley; Yale Science. TheFirst Hundred Years, 1701-1801 by Louis W. McKeehanReview by: I. Bernard CohenIsis, Vol. 38, No. 1/2 (Nov., 1947), pp. 117-119Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of The History of Science SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/225465 .

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Reviews 117

JOHN F. FULTON and ELIZABETH H. THOMSON: Benjamin Silliman, I779-I864, Pathfinder in American Science. XiV+294 PP. 14 p1. New York: Henry Schuman, 1947. $4.00

WILLARD GIBBS: The Early Work of Willard Gibbs in Applied Mechanics, comprising the text of his hitherto unpublished Ph.D. thesis and accounts of his mechanical inventions. Assembled by Lynde Phelps Wheeler, Everett Oyler Waters, and Samuel William Dudley. With a preface by John F. Fulton. x+88 pp. New York: Henry Schuman, 1947. $3.00

LOUIS W. McKEEHAN: Yale Science. The first hundred years, I70I-I80I. With a preface by Theodore Hornberger. 96 pp. New York: Henry Schuman, 1947. $2.50

The simultaneous publication of these three books is part of the celebration and com- memoration of the Sheffield Centenary. Ben- jamin Silliman, subject of the biography of Dr Fulton and Miss Thomson, played a leading role in the establishment of the scientific school at Yale, later called the Sheffield Scientific School; Willard Gibbs was the outstanding scientific product of Yale's education and the greatest figure in Igth century American science.

"Sober Ben" Silliman, as he was called when he entered college, was born in I779, in the midst of the American Revolution, and began his studies at Yale at the age of I3. The account of his college days is extremely rich and draws heavily on source material, especially the diary that Silliman began during his third year in college, on the cover of the first volume of which he wrote: "JOURNAL OF A VOYAGE ON BOARD THE SHIP ASSIDUITY TO THE HARBOUR OF SCIENCE, THROUGH THE OCEAN OF LABOUR, KEPT BY BENJAMIN SILLIMAN, COMMANDER, BEGUN JULY 27 1795 AND OF MY COLLEGE LIFE THE 3D (AETATIS i6 YEARS AND 4 MOS)."

After graduation, Silliman studied law, but before entering practice he accepted President Dwight's suggestion that he become a candidate for the newly established Professorship of Chem- istry and Natural History at Yale, to which he was appointed at the age of twenty-three on 7 September I802 -and before he had any knowledge on a professional level of the sub- ject of chemistry. He thereupon removed to Philadelphia in order to learn something of the subject he was supposed to teach, and where he made the acquaintance of many eminent scientists and scientists-to-be, including Priest- ley, Wistar, Rush, Woodhouse, and Hare. Soon after he had begun teaching, Yale voted the sum of $9,ooo for the purchase of books for the library and for "philosophical and chemical apparatus." Instead of obtaining these items through an agent, Silliman went abroad him- self to secure them, met John Dalton in Man- chester, saw Lunardi ascend in a balloon from

London, and became acquainted with many of the notables in England; among them Stan- hope, Barlow, Benjamin West, Robert Fulton, Wollaston, Sir Joseph Banks, Horne Tooke, Cavendish, Accum, William Nicholson, Caroline Herschel, Humphry Davy, and Dugald Stewart.

On his return in i8o6, Silliman began teaching in earnest and delivered his first scientific com- munication before the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences: the subject was a compari- son between the geological formations at Edin- burgh and those of the terrain surrounding New Haven. He endeared himself to the community by applying his knowledge of chemistry to the manufacturing of carbonated water for the beverages that had become fashionable. In order to provide a textbook for his students he published an American edition of William Henry's An epitome of chemistry, with notes. But his fame began with the paper published jointly with Professor James Kingsley on the Weston meteor of I807, asserting that meteors do not come from the moon nor from volcanoes, but from "distant regions in space." * The most novel feature of the report was Silliman's careful chemical analysis of the meteoric frag- ments.

It is indicative of Siliman's growing renown that the "father of American geology," William Maclure, came to seek him out in the autumn of i8o8.

Silliman, who had, while in Philadelphia, studied anatomy and surgery, played an im- portant part in the establishment of Yale's medical school and taught chemistry and pharm- acy there for nearly forty years. But the crown of his achievement, and the factor that set a permanent seal on his fame, was the establish- ment by Silliman in I8I8 of the American Journal of Science, known throughout the learned world as "Silliman's Journal" to this day. The young tutor and law student who had been appointed to a professorship of chem- istry before becoming a chemist had fully measured up to the hopes held for him by Presi- dent Timothy Dwight.

In their illuminating biography, Dr Fulton and Miss Thomson delineate the career of this exceptional American in full detail, setting it against the broad panorama of the growth of American science and the development of the college to which Silliman brought everlasting glory. This splendidly written and eminently readable book not only recounts the achieve- ments of Silliman, but also brings out his warm personality and rich humane qualities. The authors tell us about his publications, his stu- dents and assistants, and the gradual but steady spread of his influence in scientific circles. Silli- man was not only interested in research and

* Recall Jefferson's oft-quoted statement that "it is easier to believe that two Yankee professors could lie than to admit that stones fall from heaven."

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II8 Reviews

the training of scientists, but also in the presenta- tion of science to the public, and the popular scientific lectures he gave in town after town helped immeasurably to increase the numbers of the population favorable to the support of science: the Boston Transcript wrote of him as one that all Bostonians "love as a Christian and honor as a man of science." Yet despite his arduous schedule of teaching, research, and popular lecturing, he found time to edit his journal, keep up with the latest advances in science, and correspond with leading scientists in America and abroad.

Silliman, as the authors tell us, made few original contributions to science.

But, distinction he did undeniably achieve, and this through his outstanding success as a teacher. He not only carried his teaching outside the walls of the col- lege, but he extended the instruction within the college to the graduate level. He thus influenced the intellectual life of the country as did few others in the nineteenth century for he in truth paved the way for Charles W. Eliot and Daniel Coit Gilman who were so effectively to implement his doctrines.

As such he truly deserves the oft-given titles of "Patriarch and Guardian of American Sci- ence," and "Father of American Scientific Edu- cation." A good biography of Silliman has long been needed, along with those of other American scientists concerning whom we know precious little. If they can be executed as well as Dr Fulton and Miss Thomson's Silliman -drawing in, on the same scale, the life and accomplish- ment of a single individual in the background of the scientific progress of the age, both in America and abroad; and the place of his achievement in the stream of intellectual and cultural history -then we will become able at last to evaluate the growth of American science as a whole and its role in our development as a nation.

The biography of Silliman is written to cele- brate the inauguration in i847 of the new School of Applied Chemistry, as it was called in its first public announcement: eight students were enrolled in the first year of what was eventually to become the Sheffield Scientific School. Silliman, so prominent in the founding of the new institution, had, according to his biographers, "before he died, . . . the satisfac- tion of witnessing the degree of Doctor of Philosophy granted for the first time in America by Yale College to three graduates of the Scien- tific School -one of them to J. Willard Gibbs (in I863), probably the greatest scientist this country has yet produced." It is most fitting that, as part of the centenary celebration, there should be published - for the first time - Gibbs' doctoral dissertation: "On the form of the teeth of wheels in spur gearing."

Gibbs was graduated from college in i858, eleven years after the founding at Yale of the first graduate scientific school in America. Silli-

man had, according to Dr Fulton's preface to the Gibbs volume, had considerable "experience as consultant to mining companies and indus- trial concerns, [and] he had come to appreciate the importance of the practical applications of science then so acutely needed for the develop- ment of our natural resources."

In an interesting preface to Gibbs' dissertation, Lynde Phelps Wheeler shows how this prevail- ing American interest in applied science at the time when Gibbs was a student oriented him toward practical problems. Although we think of Gibbs in terms of his contributions to ab- stract thinking in science and the development of ideas in the field of theoretical physics, he was enrolled as a student of engineering. By contrast his studies in France and Germany were predominantly theoretical. Yet, as Mr Wheeler points out, Gibbs had always - even in his theoretical work - an abiding interest in "the methods and problems of mechanics." Professor Everett Oyler Waters has written an interesting commentary on Gibbs' doctoral dissertation, pointing out Gibbs' characteristic tendency to generalize," and concluding: the author's strict regard for logic, his ability to general- ize a problem, and his devotion to the thorough study of a few fundamentals rather than their pursuit into all sorts of imaginable applications, mark his early efforts here as those of no ordinary intellect.

Yet even if Gibbs' discussion of gears contains but a slight mark of the great originality that characterizes his later work, this juvenile effort is valuable as part of the record of his intellec- tual progress; it reveals the nascent master and, as Bernoulli said of Newton, ex ungue, leonem!

Two other aspects of Gibbs' practical in- terests are discussed in this volume. One is the improved railway car brake, described by Samuel William Dudley, for which a patent was granted (U. S. Patent, No. 53971, I7 April i866); the other a conical pendulum governor "of a higher order of approximation to astaticism than any of its predecessors," described by Lynde Phelps Wheeler.

The third part of the centenary trilogy, Yale Science. The first hundred years is on a dif- ferent plane than the other two. Mr McKeehan has written an anecdotal account of those who were connected with the teaching of science at Yale during its first century. This book con- tains a considerable amount of hitherto un- collected information about such subjects as: appointments to Yale, the text-books used, the purchase and repair of scientific apparatus, and the attitude of the Yale authorities toward the teaching of science.

Mr McKeehan writes of i8th century science at Yale as if it comprised but three branches: astronomy, physics, and, to a limited extent, mathematics. A very important source of in- formation was not used by him at all - the so- called Theses or Thesis-Sheets, described by

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Reviews II9

the late Dr James J. Walsh in his article de- voted to them: Scholasticism in the American Colleges, N. E. Quarterly, 1932, 5: 483-532, in the following terms: broadsides containing lists of philosophical and other propositions in Latin and Greek, which were printed for distribution among the audience on Commencement days in the colonial colleges.

The Yale Theses for I7I8, printed by Dr Walsh, were entered under the following rubrics: Theses technologicae, logicae, grammaticae, rhetoricae, mathematicae, physicae. Some of those dealing with physics are devoted to such subjects as: "Heat is produced by the transverse agitation very rapidly of very small particles," a rather advanced idea, giving evidence that the atomic theory was not unknown at x8th century Yale, "Earthquakes are caused by subterraneous heat," and "There is no such thing as the trans- mutation of metals," showing that some atten- tion at least, was paid to chemical subjects! These Theses also show that the Yale students in I7I8 were familiar with algebra, logarithms, trigonometry, and geometry, and they reveal particular aspects of their knowledge of physics (e.g., heat, centripetal force, and other topics of mechanics and also optics) and astronomy (elliptic orbits of planets, orbits of comets, novae, latitude and longitude).

Although Mr McKeehan completely omits the subject of biology from his book, the number of biological Theses indicate that this subject was part of the curriculum. Listed in I7I8 under Theses physicae, three of the biological Theses are: "Metamorphoses of insects occur," "There is no such thing as spontaneous genera- tion," "The diversity of sensation depends on the diversity of the nerves which carry it."

Mr McKeehan's neglect of the Theses* indi- cates the fundamental weakness of the book since it demonstrates a lack of concern with the students. What did they actually learn? And how did they learn it? What was their reaction to their scientific studies? How did the teaching at Yale compare to that at Harvard? To the European colleges? To what extent did the preachers who were produced by Yale dis- cuss science itself and scientific subjects in their subsequent sermons? Although Mr McKeehan sketches in the general policy of Yale in regard to the teaching of science, he nowhere touches on the general questions raised by Mr Horn- berger in his illuminating preface, wherein it is said: Eighteenth-century Yale will always have a unique fascination for historians of civilization in what is now the United States. There, from the student days of Jona-

* According to Dr Walsh, Yale has more than fifty of her Theses: for every year from I718 to 1797 inclusive, except 1719, 1721, 1722, 1729, 1731, 1732, 1735, 1737, 1741, 1775-I780 inclusive, 1791, 1792, 1794, 1796. For some of these years, no Theses were issued. Since Yale has about the richest collection of surviving Theses of the r8th century, it is all the more a pity they were not made use of.

than Edwards down through the presidency of Timothy Dwight, was the centre of Calvinistic and Congrega- tionalist orthodoxy, an attitude so deeply embedded in American institutions that its influence even to this day cannot easily be over-estimated. At Yale, alone, moreover, can one find an eighteenth-century college library pre- served practically intact from the ravages of fire and war and time. Yale, in short, provides both the background and the basic materials for that large chapter of Ameri- can intellectual history which is best described as the adjustment of religious conservatism to the Enlighten- ment. In that adjustment science and what passed for science were of course of primary importance.

If the history of American science is to be of any meaning above and beyond local antiquari- anism, it must be integrated into cultural and intellectual history-in the manner and style of the authors of the Silliman biography. To such an extent is this lacking in a study of Yale science from 1701 to I80I, that there is no men- tion whatever of the most distinguished Yale student of that period, the most interesting and most original thinker of i8th century America. Jonathan Edwards was no scientist in sensu strictu, yet he was always interested in science, used the facts and language of science con- stantly in his writings, was profoundly influ- enced by the science he learned at Yale, and attempted to integrate the science of his time into his religious and philosophical conceptions. Incidentally, Silliman himself wrote a discussion of Edwards' essay on spiders (American J. Science, I832, 2I: 109-122). The Yale scien- tists of the i8th century, as Mr McKeehan makes clear, contributed no important dis- coveries or observations that influenced the course of scientific development. Their im- portance lay in spreading the new knowledge, in influencing generations of students -of whom Edwards was the most significant. A chapter on what Edwards learned and how it affected him would have been an ideal way of demonstrating the effect of science teaching at Yale-especially the meaning of Newtonian- ism-on the intellectual currents of the time.

Within its limitations, Mr McKeehan's book collects a considerable amount of useful informa- tion. It is to be hoped that the 25oth anniversary of Yale may see the publication of a full history of Yale science, in which the materials in Yale Science. The first hundred years, and in the other two books reviewed here, may be presented in full array, adequately integrated into the in- tellectual history of Yale and of higher learning and cultural development in the New World, in the way that it so fully merits.

1. Bernard Cohen

CORTES PLA: Las Leyes de Ohm. Ensayo de Historia Cientifico y Humana. 45 p. Santa Fe, Argentina; Universidad Nacional del Litoral, 1942.

This neat little book gives, within its small compass, an adequate and interesting account of the fundamental researches of G. S. Ohm on

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