The Lunar Society
In the same years that Newtonian science spread in acceptance and popularity, Europe was becoming increasingly industrialized. The commercial realms of mining, transportation, and manufacturing were places of technical innovation. For the educated public, this was as much the story of science as the laboratory work of natural philosophers. As in the textbooks, theoretical science became relevant in its applications. Educated people wished to learn the new science, explore new ideas, and apply discovery to innovations. In the rising urban and industrial centers, such as Manchester and Newcastle upon Tyne, England, new local "philosophical" societies combined commercial, scientific, technological, and social interests. Such civic organizations added civic pride and advancement to the conversation of the salon. Less typical, but influential through its assemblage of talent, was the group of gentlemen, doctors, manufacturers, clergymen and engineers who formed the "Lunar Society" in Birmingham in 1775. Pictured here are three of its guiding lights, the engineers and inventors James Watt, Matthew Boulton, and William Murdoch (the statue erected in their honor by the city of Birmingham).
Equal parts philosophical interest, disciplined work habits, and profit motive drove their explorations and collaborations into new science and technology. Boulton made his initial career with the new chemical process of silver-plating, establishing a factory and feeding an expanding commercial culture of consumer products. His wealth allowed him to invest in Watt's machines. Boulton and Watt famously improved steam engines into practical machines for industry, building on their mechanical and mathematical knowledge.The much younger Murdoch became an employee and partner, and himself a skilled inventor (gas lighting, steam engine controls, steam locomotive) and chemist.
Another "Lunatick" of the group was the pottery and china manufacturer Josiah Wedgwood. He combined innovations in chemistry and manufacturing to create the enormously successful Wedgwood pottery works. It was an early model for factory labor and production processes, and in marketing innovations for consumer products.
James Keir had a similar combination of interests -- chemical innovations that he employed in his successful glassworks, metallurgical discoveries, chemical works, coal mining, and later management of one of Boulton's factories.
Other members were medically trained, such as Erasmus Darwin, who had met Keir in medical school in Edinburgh. The physician William Withering also educated at Edinburgh. His botanical skills led to his fame as the discoverer of the chemical activity of digitalis (heart medicine), derived from the foxglove plant. Darwin, too, was a noted botanist, as well as a successful doctor and poet. His epic poem "The Botanic Garden" introduced British readers to Linnaeus's system of plant classification, including the somewhat scandalous poetry about the sex lives of plants, given in classical allusions but nonetheless rather salacious descriptions.
Although Erasmus Darwin was a fairly radical free-thinking Deist, other members of the group were more orthodox in their beliefs. One example is the geologist John Whitehurst, who tied his innovations in mapping coal seams and strata with a theory (in An Inquiry into the Original State and Formation of the Earth; Deduced from Facts and the Laws of Nature, 1778) of floods and formation of the earth consistent with his reading of Genesis. Such religious matters meant less within the Lunar Society than the value of free inquiry and the excitement of knowledge.
But unorthodox views did give them problems for their reputation, mostly notably in the case of the chemist and radical Dissenting clergyman Joseph Priestley. He wrote boldly not only on his discoveries in chemistry but on principles of religion and government. His intellectual goal was a consistent application of rational principles, fusing Enlightenment ideals of inquiry and liberty with a reformed theism. He was widely vilified for his radical religious views (as in such treatises as "A History of the Corruptions of Christianity", rejecting the Trinity and reconsidering the nature of Christ) and his anti-monarchist politics. In 1791, a mob in Birmingham attacked a meeting of Dissenting radicals celebrating the French Revolution -- religious and political views both were the target. In the riots over the next three days, Dissenter's churches and homes were burnt, including Priestley's. He fled with his family, finding refuge among colleagues until leaving England for Pennsylvania.
The individual histories within the Lunar Society thus nicely illustrate the combinations of beliefs, politics, investigations, and applications possible with the new science, and the broad range of its connections and interests and potential for radical innovation.