Joseph Priestley, The Ultimate Dabbler

In a recent post In Praise of Amateurs over at Positive Liberty, Jim Babka refers in passing to Joseph Priestley, whom he calls "the ultimate dabbler." I cannot imagine a more apt designation. Few historical figures have been as eclectic as Priestley, who had a finger, it seems, in virtually every field. Among other things, Priestley was a minister, a theologian, a scientist, a historian, a linguist, a rhetorician, a philosopher, an artist, and a political radical.

Priestley's major claim to fame is that he was a co-founder of the Unitarian denomination and a major theological influence on several Founding Fathers (including Adams, Jefferson, and Franklin). If he was a renaissance man, he was also a man of 'renaissance' in the sense of the word that refers to rebirth or revival. He had a powerful concern for personal transformation, as well as for the moral and religious transformation of society. It is here that Priestley's primary significance lay: he became the leader of Rational Dissent, an icon for a generation of Unitarians, and a crusader for religious renaissance in Britain and then America.

His religious contributions, however, do not exhaust his influence. He made contributions to many disciplines, albeit unfortunately in an age in which specialization became increasingly important. His impact in the sciences was therefore wider than it was deep. Nevertheless, Priestley managed to achieve such feats as to discover seven gases, including oxygen, and to invent a machine for the carbonation of beverages. Although neither he nor his friends recognized its importance at the time, Priestley also discovered the inverse-square law of electrostatics. In the field of psychology Priestley defended David Hartley's associationist theory. His mechanistic view of consciousness influenced neuroscientists long after his death. In the field of epistemology Priestley was an ardent and important critic of Scottish Common Sense Realism.

Other work by Priestley includes several scientific and religious histories. He also wrote on the philosophy of history and developed history curricula for educators. In addition to designing curricula he was an extremely important educational philosopher, and advocated among other things education for women.

Priestley's interest in languages and the humanities led him to study ten different languages, including Chaldee, Syriac, and Arabic. More importantly, he wrote treatises on oratory, rhetoric, and grammar. His grammar textbook made him, says Schofield, "a major figure in the study of English." In the arts, the first edition of Priestley's treatise on perspective contained the first published announcement of rubber erasers. (Not much of a claim to fame, but I guess you take what you can get.)

Priestley's support of the American and French Revolutions led to his becoming the target of the Birmingham Riots of 1791, in which his home and the Dissenter chapel at which he preached were destroyed. His defense of the "most sacred" right to revolution eventually led to such public animus against his person that he was forced to relocate to the Americas. There he became a mentor to key Fathers of the Republic, including Jefferson and Adams.

Priestley's home shown destroyed after the Birmingham Riots of 1791

One of the more interesting aspects of Priestley's work is the way that his contributions to all of these fields tied together. Due to his study of Hartleyan psychology, for example, Priestley was painfully aware that aged people—not to mention aged societies—don’t like change, and that Britain would not become Unitarian overnight. His was a careful pedagogy that advocated free inquiry and openness to change, without pushing too hard in any obviously heretical directions. Hartleyan psychology also imbued him with an appreciation for the power of habit, and in his sermons he advocated habit-formation as a means of moral transformation. By sampling broadly of many disciplines, then, Priestley was able to achieve a more holistic understanding of human existence and to place the many facets of human knowledge into constructive dialogue with each other. In our age of specialization this sort of consilience is too often lost. That is why, since discovering Priestley, I have made a conscious effort to broaden my horizons and to do some dabbling of my own.