So during our second week in London, our class took the time to closely examine a few key figures that made major contributions to various scientific fields during the Victorian era. There was a lot going on between the mid 18th and 19th centuries that helped to expedite the progress of the period; two things in particular seemed especially influential.
First, we learned that regional scientific societies, composed of gentlemen, philosophers, what we would now consider entrepreneurs, and any other reasonably upstanding members of society with an interest in science or invention, were meeting to share ideas, explore new fields, and develop new technologies and theories. There seemed to be, at least amongst certain social circles, a lot of curiosity, a lot of creativity, and a lot of initiative during this time period, which must have had a lot to do with why so much was invented, improved, or discovered in such a short amount of time and across such a wide range of fields.
Second, we learned about the innovation of the patent system. Now this was an eye-opener. It seems so obvious to us now that if somebody invents something he should be able to profit from his invention. But I guess I never stopped to think that there might have been a time when a person was not always entitled to the rights over his own invention, when his ideas were not always his property, when nothing could stop a person from stealing and selling Foreman grills when that person’s name wasn’t George Foreman. What an exciting time it must have been when people were first able to claim ownership over their ideas. For so long, so many people must have had great ideas independently, but were too afraid to tell anyone or divulge their findings for fear of getting their work stolen or exploited without any credit or benefit for the inventor.
It’s a funny thing. Bizarre as it may sound, sometimes, since different people have different strengths, and since two minds are more, and often even better than one, and more minds still are often better than less, until of course there are so many minds attached to so many mouths that people start stepping on each other’s feet and yelling and screaming to be heard and things sort of turn into a cacophony of unintelligible noise and nonsense and nobody knows what anybody else is saying so everyone gets fed up and abandons whatever project they had all met to discuss in the first place (pause for breath), working in conjunction with others often yields positive results. People can work off of one another; someone might have a great idea of how to get a project on its feet, but another person might come up with a great way to develop it, or improve it, or find another use for it, and so on and so forth. What the patent system did was encourage the sharing of ideas, and incentivize creation and invention. Inventing became a potentially lucrative enterprise for the first time, as long as someone had an idea worth perusing. It must have been exciting, a breath of fresh air for those with a passion for invention, for those longing to take part in intellectual discussion, for those searching for a practical application for science, or for those just excited about the science itself.
Anyway, I’d like to quickly comment on the individual that we studied this week that I found the most interesting, Humphrey Davey. So, disclaimer, this guy was totally insane. Walking a seriously fine line between brilliant and actually retarded. The sort of things he was doing to himself were just… well we’ll get to that. Maybe some background first would be nice.
Humphrey Davey was a kid that loved to read. He also loved to be told stories and to tell stories himself, a feature of his personality that has a large impact on his persona later on. His parents died while he was still young, both of fever, but he was adopted by some guy and put in a good school when it was realized that he had a passion for learning. He was apprenticed to a surgeon, but eventually developed a strong interest in chemistry, the field for which is most remembered. He ended up holding various impressive positions, became director of the Royal society, all that god stuff for which I have little interest. What I am more interested in is his personality and experimental methods.
First, let’s look at his personality. Davey became a professor of chemistry, and is remembered for being a brilliant lecturer. People used to love to hear him speak, not only for his content, but also for his charisma and masterful employment of the English language. If I do recall, it was also mentioned in class that Davey was a bit of a poet, and that other poets used to come to his chemistry lectures in order to add to their list of usable metaphors, which I found pretty funny. As much as I liked our readings’ description of Davey’s popularity as a lecturer, I guess he could also be quite disagreeable. Just to gloss over a couple examples of this, a sort of contest between Davey and a man named Stevenson over who had the best anti-explosive mining lamp revealed Davey’s pugnacious nature. He also demonstrated that he could be quite jealous and spiteful through his later interactions with his rising protégé, Michael Faraday. Though Davey may not be an ideal person, I still have a pleasant impression of him, just because I like when brilliant men of science end up being brilliant and charismatic public speakers as well. Sort of shatters the stereotype of the antisocial, awkward scientist that I hate so much. I guess I’d just love to be a personable, captivating scientist one day, so I like learning about people I can look up to (I’ll try to be a little nicer than him, though).
Oh, and the shocking thing about Davey that makes him a fun person to learn about is his self-experimentation. Davey is remembered for discovering several elements, especially several alkali earth metals, but his most humorous experiments involve his studies with gasses. Another of his most memorable contributions to science is his discovery of the effects of gaseous nitrous oxide, but he “studied” a wide range of gasses. And how did he go about doing this? Well he’d cook up some interesting concoctions, collect the gasses released, and “test “ them himself, by which I mean, he would inhale them and see what happened. Now this worked out all right when what he was inhaling was laughing gas (nitrous oxide). He had plenty of fun over that discovery. But you can imagine what happened with his experiments with stuff like carbon dioxide and monoxide. He was the sort of guy that would inhale three liters of pure hydrocarbon, convulse, pass out, wake up 30 hours later, acknowledge that if he had inhaled any more he would have died, and then the very next week start inhaling gaseous carbonic acid. Maniac! (Oh, and it’s deceptive to say that he’s this “type of guy,” because he actually is this guy) He must have done soooo much damage to his body over the course of his studies it hurts my lungs just to think about it. But anyway, in retrospect, his methods are just hilarious. Nobody these days would be so reckless, though it’s arguable that his approach, being so proactive and hands on, had a lot to do with his success and productivity in a reasonably short amount of time.
Anyway, I think I’ll leave it there. Peace.
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