Abstract
This chapter investigates electricity’s status as a spectacular yet mysterious public science in the eighteenth century, analysing the work of the itinerant experimenter Benjamin Martin. It examines the discourse of imponderable fluids, which was used to explain the operation of electricity, and assesses the use of figurative language in eighteenth-century science, in particular the use of analogy and metaphor, in the light of the Royal Society’s criticism of figurative language in natural philosophy.
Lectures on Electricity, Lecture II.
VI. Spirits kindled by fire darting from a lady’s eyes (without a metaphor).
Ebenezer Kinnersley, advertisement, Pennsylvania Gazette (18 April 1751).
Their language is vitally metaphorical; that is, it marks the before unapprehended relations of things and perpetuates their apprehension…
Percy Bysshe Shelley, A Defense of Poetry (1821).
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Notes
- 1.
‘An historical account of the wonderful discoveries’, 193. This article was the work of Albrecht von Haller. Tucker, Bolt of Fate, 324.
- 2.
Davy, ‘Historical sketch of electrical discovery’ (1810), in Collected Works, vol. VIII, 263. Davy’s is just one of many histories of electricity produced during this period. Others include Priestley, History and Present State of Electricity, and Lofft, Eudosia.
- 3.
Adams, Essay on Electricity, 11. See also Sha, ‘From Electrical Matter’, 144.
- 4.
Schaffer, ‘Natural Philosophy and Public Spectacle’, 6–10; Stewart, Rise of Public Science, 104.
- 5.
Wylie, Young Coleridge, 129; Heilbron, Electricity, 67–70.
- 6.
Burke, Select Works, vol. III, 186.
- 7.
I have found Raymond Williams’s ‘structures of feeling’ useful for thinking about how electrical language enables writers to articulate otherwise inarticulable characteristics of their lived experience. Williams, Marxism and Literature,128–135.
- 8.
Olson, Scottish Philosophy, 171.
- 9.
Leslie, ‘Lectures on Electricity’, 28.
- 10.
Ibid.
- 11.
Morgan, Lectures on Electricity, vol. I, iv–v.
- 12.
Leslie, ‘Lectures on Electricity’, 29.
- 13.
Schaffer, ‘Consuming Flame’; Fara, Entertainment for Angels; Bertucci, ‘Sparks in the Dark’; Bertucci and Pancaldi (eds.), Electric Bodies; Delbourgo, A Most Amazing Scene; Riskin, Science in the Age of Sensibility.
- 14.
Keen, Crisis of Literature, 1–4; Klancher, Making of English Reading Audiences, 10–11.
- 15.
Freke, Treatise, 140. See also Millburn, Benjamin Martin.
- 16.
Priestley, History, 86–87. See also Delbourgo, A Most Amazing Scene, 4; Watson, A Sequel, 64.
- 17.
Millburn, Benjamin Martin, 52–53.
- 18.
Martin, Essay on Electricity, 5.
- 19.
Ibid., 6.
- 20.
Millburn, Benjamin Martin, 53.
- 21.
Martin, Essay on Electricity, 6.
- 22.
Stewart, Rise of Public Science, 119.
- 23.
Newton, Opticks, 340–341.
- 24.
Martin, Essay on Electricity, 8–9.
- 25.
Franklin, Benjamin Franklin’s Experiments, 203.
- 26.
Martin, Essay on Electricity, 9, 11.
- 27.
Ibid., 18–19.
- 28.
Ibid., 20–21.
- 29.
Ibid., 19.
- 30.
Freke, Treatise, 138.
- 31.
Fara, Sympathetic Attractions, 18
- 32.
Martin, Essay on Electricity, 36.
- 33.
Ibid.
- 34.
‘An historical account of the wonderful discoveries’, 193; see also Bertucci, ‘Sparks in the Dark’, 91.
- 35.
Martin, Essay on Electricity, 37.
- 36.
Ibid.
- 37.
Heilbron, Electricity, 316.
- 38.
Martin, Supplement, 29; See also Millburn, Benjamin Martin, 40.
- 39.
Millburn, Benjamin Martin, 68.
- 40.
Ibid., 74.
- 41.
Martin, Young Gentleman and Lady’s Philosophy, vol. I, 297.
- 42.
Ibid., 301.
- 43.
Ibid., 300.
- 44.
Ibid., 303.
- 45.
Ibid., 305.
- 46.
Ibid., 311.
- 47.
Ibid., 311–312.
- 48.
- 49.
Ibid., 324.
- 50.
Ibid., 301, 309.
- 51.
Ibid., 316.
- 52.
Fara, Pandora’s Breeches, n.p.
- 53.
Watson, A Sequel, 41.
- 54.
Schaffer, ‘Consuming Flame’, 496; Home, ‘Electricity and the Nervous Fluid’, 241; Heimann, ‘Ether and Imponderables’, 61. Richard Sha suggests a shift to concepts of electricity as a fluid from earlier notions of ‘fire’ as exemplified in Freke’s account. Sha, ‘From Electrical Matter’, 143.
- 55.
Heilbron, Weighing Imponderables, 7.
- 56.
Heilbron, Electricity, 70.
- 57.
Reill, ‘The Legacy’, 33.
- 58.
Heilbron, Weighing Imponderables, 7.
- 59.
Ibid., 5. This model transcended disciplinary distinctions in natural philosophy, as Jan Golinski notes. Golinski, ‘Chemistry’, 388.
- 60.
Heilbron, Weighing Imponderables, 5. Geoffrey Cantor discusses how this was at times an uneasy connection. Cantor ‘Weighing Light’, 130–131.
- 61.
Heilbron, Weighing Imponderables, 6–7.
- 62.
Ibid., 16.
- 63.
Fulford, ‘Conducting the Vital Fluid’, 63; Heilbron, Weighing Imponderables, 14, 16. Heilbron’s key example is the relation between electricity and the imponderable fluid of heat, caloric. Ibid., 10–13.
- 64.
Fara, Sympathetic Attractions, 176–177.
- 65.
Fara, ‘Marginalized Practices’, 491.
- 66.
Riskin, Science in the Age of Sensibility, 198.
- 67.
Heilbron, Weighing Imponderables, 17. See also ibid., 19, 21, 22; Sha, ‘From Electrical Matter’, 143.
- 68.
Fulford, ‘Conducting the Vital Fluid’; Fara, Sympathetic Attractions.
- 69.
Fara, Sympathetic Attractions, 6.
- 70.
Reill, ‘The Legacy’, 33.
- 71.
Fara, Sympathetic Attractions, 4.
- 72.
Ibid., 7, 18–20.
- 73.
Sha, ‘From Electrical Matter’, 145.
- 74.
Heilbron, Weighing Imponderables, 1–4.
- 75.
Cantor, ‘Weighing Light’, 128.
- 76.
Hobbes, Leviathan, vol. II, 50.
- 77.
Locke, Essay Concerning Human Understanding, 298.
- 78.
See also ibid., 40.
- 79.
Sprat, History of the Royal Society, 62; Swift, Gulliver’s Travels, 271–272. See also Skouen and Stark, ‘Introduction’, 20.
- 80.
Sprat, History of the Royal Society, 112.
- 81.
Ibid., 112. See also Golinski, ‘Robert Boyle’, 64–65; Stewart, Public Science, xx–xxi.
- 82.
Richards, Philosophy of Rhetoric; Lakoff and Johnson, Metaphors We Live By; Black, Models and Metaphors; Blumenberg, Paradigms for a Metaphorology; Derrida, ‘White Mythology’; Ricœur, The Rule of Metaphor; Fogelin, Figuratively Speaking; Boyd, ‘Metaphor and Theory Change’.
- 83.
Sprat, History of the Royal Society, 113.
- 84.
Skouen and Stark, ‘Introduction’, 2, 14–15. See also Dear, ‘Totius in Verba’; Vickers, ‘The Royal Society’, 9.
- 85.
The Royal Society’s edict against figurative language continues to inform the perceived differences between scientific discourse and other forms of cultural expression. Christie, ‘Introduction’, 3; Fara, Sympathetic Attractions, 173–174.
- 86.
Kahn, Rhetoric, Prudence and Scepticism, 48.
- 87.
Jardine and Silverthorne, ‘Introduction’, xxii.
- 88.
Bacon, New Organon, 180.
- 89.
Ibid., 180–181.
- 90.
Porter, ‘Scientific Analogy’, 216.
- 91.
Reill, ‘The Legacy’, 38.
- 92.
Fara, Sympathetic Attractions, 172.
- 93.
Berkeley, Alciphron, 111.
- 94.
Ibid.
- 95.
Ibid.
- 96.
This distinction between analogy and metaphor is often found in modern philosophical accounts of the terms. See, for instance Botha, Metaphor and its Moorings, 91, 93.
- 97.
Myers, ‘How Body Matters’, 123; Law, Rhetoric of Empiricism, 102–104.
- 98.
Berkeley, Alciphron, 138–139.
- 99.
Johnson, ‘Preface’, Dictionary, vol. I, n.p. See also Fara, Sympathetic Attractions, 171. Gillian Beer notes a similar pattern in nineteenth-century scientific writings. Beer, Darwin’s Plots, 5, 82–83.
- 100.
Fara, Sympathetic Attractions, 174–175.
- 101.
Christie, ‘Introduction’, 4.
- 102.
Stafford, Body Criticism, 17; Otis, Networking, 12, 47–48; Winter, Mesmerized; Fara, Sympathetic Attractions, 174.
- 103.
Fara makes similar claims for magnetic discourse. Fara, Sympathetic Attractions, 30. See also ibid., 151.
- 104.
Kinnersley, Pennsylvania Gazette, 18 April 1751; Green, Epitome of Electricity, 55–56.
- 105.
‘An historical account of the wonderful discoveries’, 194.
- 106.
Davidson, ‘What Metaphors Mean’, 31–47.
- 107.
Otis, Networking, 4. See also Mitchell, Contagious Metaphor.
- 108.
Shelley, Shelley’s Poetry and Prose, 482.
- 109.
Pasanek, ‘Eighteenth-Century Metaphors of Mind’, 30.
Bibliography
Johnson, Samuel. A Dictionary of the English Language: In which the Words are Deduced from Their Originals, and Illustrated in Their Different Significations by Examples from the Best Writers. 2nd edn. 2 vols. Vol. I. London: J. and P. Knapton, 1755–1756.
Morgan, George Cadogan. Lectures on Electricity. 2 vols. Norwich: J. March, 1794.
Sprat, Thomas. The History of the Royal Society of London, for the Improving of Natural Knowledge. London: J. Martyn, 1667.
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Fairclough, M. (2017). Introduction: Electricity, Spectacle and Figuration. In: Literature, Electricity and Politics 1740–1840. Palgrave Studies in Literature, Science and Medicine. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-59315-3_1
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