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H-NET BOOK REVIEW 
Published by [log in to unmask] (June, 1998) 
 
I. Bernard Cohen.  _Science and the Founding Fathers:  Science in 
the Political Thought of Jefferson, Franklin, Adams, and Madison_. 
Corrected edition.  New York:  W. W. Norton, 1995, 1997.  368 pp. 
Illustrations, bibliographical references, and index.  $25.00 
(cloth), ISBN 0-393-03501-8; $15.95 (paper), ISBN 0-393-31510-X. 
 
Reviewed for H-Law by Shalom Doron 
<[log in to unmask]>, Brooklyn College/CUNY and R.  B. 
Bernstein <[log in to unmask]>, New York Law School and Brooklyn 
College/CUNY 
 
        Exploring the Age of Experiments in Government 
 
In the past half century, historians and other scholars who study 
the origins of the Constitution and the political achievements of 
the revolutionary generation have spawned a rich interdisciplinary 
literature.  These scholars have shown the influence on those 
achievements of just about every realm of thought--political, 
religious, cultural, ethnographic--except one.  By and large, 
historians, political scientists, and constitutional and legal 
scholars either have overlooked the influences of science on 
Americans' political thought and action in this era, or they have 
contented themselves with superficial and hasty references betraying 
their own lack of knowledge of such matters as Newtonian physics.[1] 
 
For this reason, _Science and the Founding Fathers_ is a 
groundbreaking work on the creation of the American Republic.  I. 
Bernard Cohen, now the Victor S. Thomas Professor Emeritus of the 
History of Science at Harvard University, helped launch the history 
of science as an academic discipline; the first recipient of an 
American university's Ph.D. degree in the field, he has done 
pioneering work on such subjects as Newton's _Principia_ and 
Benjamin Franklin's science.[2] In the book under review, Cohen 
investigates the role of science in the "age of experiments in 
government,"  seeking to correct what he sees as a gross oversight 
by scholars of American political, legal, and constitutional 
history. Written in simple, engaging prose, _Science and the 
Founding Fathers_ deserves praise as a book that explains, for those 
with little or no scientific background, complex scientific ideas 
and their connections to the political thought of the Founding 
Fathers. 
 
Cohen argues "that scientific issues were related to the political 
thought and also the political action of our Founding Fathers" (p. 
13).  The revolutionary generation was heavily influenced by the 
Enlightenment, with its great emphasis on science; they based much 
of their political theory on scientific ideas and defended their 
theories by analogies from the physical, mechanical, and biological 
sciences. 
 
In his first chapter, "Science and American History," Cohen examines 
the impact of the Enlightenment, also known as the "Age of Reason," 
on Americans of the revolutionary generation.  He shows that many of 
the Founding Fathers--including Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, 
John Adams, and James Madison, the main subjects of this 
study--repeatedly used scientific ideals, concepts, and analogies to 
formulate and support ideas about government.  These scientific 
concepts and analogies drew primarily, though by no means 
exclusively, on the "twin luminaries" of the Enlightenment, the 
philosopher John Locke and the scientist Isaac Newton. Says Cohen, 
"There can be no doubt that the Founding Fathers displayed a 
knowledge of scientific concepts and principles which establishes 
their credentials as citizens of the Age of Reason" (p. 60). 
 
Chapter Two, "Science and the Political Thought of Thomas Jefferson: 
The Declaration of Independence," begins by exploring Jefferson's 
relationship with science in general and with Newtonian physics in 
particular.  Jefferson's education in science was extensive, and he 
manifested his interest in the promotion of science through the 
active roles he played to expand scientific knowledge, both as 
president of the American Philosophical Society (an honor he valued 
more highly than his election in the same year as vice president of 
the United States) and as president of the United States.  The most 
important example of his promotion of scientific knowledge was his 
devising of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, which would explore the 
territory to the west of what was in 1803 the United States (and 
which the United States ultimately acquired through the Louisiana 
Purchase).  In preparation for the expedition, President Jefferson 
had his choice as its leader, Captain Meriwether Lewis, trained by 
leading American scientists in botany, anatomy, zoology, astronomy, 
and Indian history.  Furthermore, in a remarkable confidential 
letter that was in effect the expedition's charter, Jefferson 
instructed Lewis to gather extensive scientific data about the 
country he would be passing through and its flora, fauna, and 
inhabitants.[3] 
 
In the 1780s, Jefferson--ever the patriot--used his scientific 
training and methodology to counter "the widely held 'scientific' 
theory that plants and animals, and even human beings, of the New 
World were inferior to those of the Old" (p. 73).  French 
naturalists, led by the Comte de Buffon, argued that all life 
"degenerated" in America.  Jefferson responded in his only 
full-length book, _Notes on the State of Virginia_, with an analysis 
of extensive specimens (which he had collected and preserved as 
evidence)  proving that plant and animal life was as large and 
healthy in America as in Europe, if not more so--thus proving that 
America was the equal, and perhaps even the superior, of Europe.[4] 
 
Cohen then discusses how "Jefferson's most renowned political 
statement, the Declaration of Independence, exhibits signs of his 
commitment to the Newtonian Philosophy" (p. 68).  Cohen finds 
Newtonian echoes in the preamble of the Declaration of Independence, 
where "Jefferson defines the 'separate and equal station' as one to 
which the people are entitled by 'the Laws of Nature'" (p. 110).  In 
using the plural "Laws," rather than the singular "Law," Cohen 
argues, Jefferson was referring not to the common law, but to the 
scientific "Laws of Nature," a reference to Newton's laws of motion. 
Referring to human rights as "self evident,"  Jefferson means to 
say, in Cohen's view, that they are "axioms," just as the "Laws of 
Nature" were considered to be "axioms," but in the Newtonian sense, 
not the Euclidian sense--that is, the truths of the Declaration "are 
plainly self evident only in a particular way" (p. 133). 
 
Cohen's third chapter, "Benjamin Franklin:  A Scientist in the World 
of Public Affairs," outlines Franklin's extensive scientific 
credentials, including his work in the new science of electricity, 
of which he was a principal founder.  (Here Cohen draws on his work 
on Franklin covering more than five decades, from his 1941 edition 
of Franklin's _Experiments and Observations on Electricity_ to his 
1990 collection of essays, _Benjamin Franklin's Science_.[5])  Cohen 
first proves that Franklin's reputation as a scientist was an 
important qualification for his appointment to diplomatic office, 
first as colonial agent (that is, lobbyist for several American 
colonies) to the parliament and king of Great Britain, and later, 
with the coming of the American Revolution, as American minister 
plenipotentiary to France.  Cohen then discusses the examples of 
scientific analogy that appear in Franklin's political thought and 
arguments.  Most notable of these is Franklin's argument in favor of 
a unicameral legislature for the new nation, wherein he compared 
John Adams's suggested two-house legislature to a specimen of 
natural history, a two-headed snake which, if "one head should 
choose to go on one side of the stem of a bush and the other head 
should prefer the other side...neither of the heads would consent to 
come back or give way to the other" (p. 155), and the snake--and by 
analogy the nation--would die. This episode illustrates how Cohen's 
perspective enriches our understandings of perennial subjects of 
scholarly inquiry; though the controversy over unicameral versus 
bicameral legislatures has long been a staple of historians' 
understandings of the evolution of American constitutionalism,[6] no 
previous scholar has noted the invocation of scientific analogies by 
the key figures in that dispute. 
 
Like Jefferson, Franklin used science to promote the importance of 
America.  In his 1751 pamphlet, "Observations Concerning the 
Increase of Mankind," Franklin used the mathematical science of 
demography to study the population explosion in America as compared 
with Europe, "predicting that under the American conditions which 
provided unchecked growth, the population would double every twenty 
or twenty-five years" (p. 158); from these calculations, Franklin 
concluded that "British America was destined to become the most 
populous and the most important part of the British system" (p. 
159). 
 
Cohen's third chapter, "Science and Politics:  Some Aspects of the 
Thought and Career of John Adams," deals with science in Adams's 
political thought, as seen through Adams's debate with John Taylor 
of Caroline in the early 1800s over the principle of balance in 
government.  Though Adams was not as well-versed in science as 
Jefferson or Franklin, his Harvard education (in particular, his 
studies with Professor John Winthrop) gave him a background in both 
physics and mathematics.  By choosing "balance,"  most notably 
"balance of power" and "balance of property," as the basis of his 
political philosophy, Adams rejected Newton's dynamics, the study of 
forces and accelerations, for the equilibrium of statics, "the 
science of forces at rest" (p. 216).  Adams attributed to the 
seventeenth-century English political thinker James Harrington (who 
predated Newton) this concept of political power balanced by its 
proportion to ownership of land; Harrington believed "that the 
physical sciences are of absolutely no use as sources of analogies 
for political discourse" (p. 217).  Cohen's crucial point is that 
Adams's balance was _not_ Newtonian, for all that he seems to have 
thought it was. 
 
Responding to John Taylor's charge that the Constitution of the 
United States might be "complicated with the idea of a balance"  (p. 
225), Adams responded with an image "of balanced machinery, of 
wheels within wheels"  (p. 226), which promotes equilibrium in the 
system, which the people desire for its tendency to promote their 
interests.  Indeed, according to Adams, the people "have invented a 
balance to all balances in their caucuses," where, Adams wrote, 
"_elections are decided_" (p.  226).  Adams _did_ cite Isaac 
Newton's third law of motion--erroneously--to defend this system of 
balance in the context of his argument for a bicameral legislature. 
In response to Franklin's ridicule of the system as impractical, 
Adams cited Newton's third law--"'that reaction must always be equal 
and contrary to reaction,' or there can never be any _rest_" (p. 
229).  Adams, Cohen notes, had forgotten the meaning of Newton's 
third law, which applies to the forces that bodies exert on each 
other, not equal and opposite forces acting on the same body, which 
produces Adams's image of equilibrium or "rest."  Adams's political 
theory, while scientific, was not Newtonian, though Adams still 
sought to "hang his hat" on that esteemed sage of the Enlightenment. 
 
In his fifth and final chapter, "Science and the Constitution," 
Cohen studies science as it influenced the political thought of 
James Madison and other members of the Federal Convention of 1787, 
as it emerges in the text of the Constitution, and as it was used by 
Madison to defend the Constitution in his essays in _The 
Federalist_.  This chapter also serves as an epilogue to pull 
together all the diffuse parts of the book and represent them as a 
cohesive whole, arguing a single thesis. 
 
Cohen begins this chapter with the single direct reference to 
science in the Constitution--namely, the power granted to Congress 
under Article I, section 8, clause 8:  "To promote the Progress of 
Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors 
and Inventors the Exclusive Right to their respective Writings and 
Discoveries."  Cohen analyzes the various versions of the provision 
recommended in and considered by the Convention, as well as some 
practical applications, such as the invention of the steamboat. 
 
Cohen continues with a discussion of whether the Constitution is a 
Newtonian document, citing Woodrow Wilson and others, who contend 
that it is Newtonian (and, in Wilson's case, Darwinian as well), 
both in its structure and its background.  Cohen sets out to 
disprove those claims, and achieves his goal.  In sum, he agrees 
with the late political scientist and historian Clinton Rossiter 
that, even though it goes too far to say that the Constitution is a 
Newtonian document, Newtonian physics and the science of the 
Enlightenment in general "quickened the advance toward free 
government" (p. 255) in three ways--by conquering superstition; by 
its kinship with democracy, leading promoters of science to promote 
"free government" as well; and by its system of "immutable natural 
laws," which gave "sanction to the doctrine of natural law" (p. 
256).  Moreover, as Cohen notes, the Constitution's framers did make 
extensive use of scientific metaphors and analogies in the debates 
over the Constitution, both in the Convention and during the 
ratification controversy. 
 
For example, _The Federalist_, the handiwork of Alexander Hamilton, 
John Jay, and James Madison, was the primary book of arguments for 
the proponents of the Constitution during the ratification 
controversy.  Cohen shows that its authors often used scientific 
metaphors, even though science was not their primary concern.  "What 
is significant, therefore," Cohen notes, "is not that science 
provided metaphors in a prominent way for the authors of _The 
Federalist_, but rather the fact that there are any such metaphors 
at all" (p. 272).  Scientific references in _The Federalist_ 
indicate that science pervaded the thought of its authors, and of 
the Revolutionary generation as a whole, so completely that they 
referred to it unconsciously in their political debates. 
 
Cohen's overarching thesis is that science influenced the political 
theories and debates of the Revolutionary generation, by providing 
them with ideals to achieve and models to imitate, as well as 
analogies to support and illustrate their arguments in debate. 
Cohen makes his thesis more complex by implying, in his last 
chapter, that the influence of science is not always deliberate. 
That is, the Founders did not necessarily incorporate scientific 
language into their arguments intentionally; rather, it had become 
second nature to them. 
 
We have two serious criticisms of this book, neither of which 
reduces its importance as a groundbreaking work in the field of 
early American history.  The first is structural, or perhaps, 
editorial:  this book is too diffuse.  In attempting to open up a 
completely new approach to the study of the formation of the 
American Republic, Cohen has tried, and predictably failed, to 
address every important aspect of the scientific influence in the 
politics of the period.  Attempting to do too much is always a 
danger when one goes "where no one has gone before." Furthermore, 
Cohen's method of burying discussions of key issues in "Supplements" 
rather than in integrating them into his main text, and of failing 
to provide clear cross-references to those Supplements at points 
when they would illuminate his discussion, often leaves the reader 
at sea. 
 
Our second, more serious criticism is that Cohen insists that every 
scientific reference that he, an expert on science and its history, 
finds in the writings of the Revolutionary generation, must be 
intentional and must therefore imply or contain every meaning that 
he finds within it.  Cohen's thesis would become richer and more 
accurate if he expanded it to say that even the political theory of 
the Revolutionary generation sometimes draws on science quite by 
accident, because science permeated their thinking, and therefore 
such references do not necessarily mean or imply all that Cohen 
claims they do.  (Cohen's acknowledgment, previously mentioned, that 
scientific references were second-nature to the Revolutionary 
generation to the extent of being unconscious or inadvertent should 
have been more central to his argument.) 
 
When, for example, Jefferson referred to "the Laws of Nature" and 
"self evident" truths in the Declaration of Independence, he did not 
necessarily intend to imply the more specific Newtonian references 
that Cohen attributes to him.  Thus, Jefferson's inadvertent 
resonances with Newtonian thought are analogous, so to speak, to 
James Madison's use of scientific analogies in _The Federalist_. 
Moreover, recall Cohen's insistence that Jefferson was the American 
of his generation who was by far most conversant with Newtonian 
physics.  Had Jefferson intended to incorporate direct and specific 
references to Newtonian physics in the Declaration, by Cohen's own 
analysis Jefferson would have been writing over the heads of the 
vast majority of his intended audience--including the other two 
leading members of the committee assigned to draft the Declaration, 
John Adams and Benjamin Franklin.  (Cohen notes that, because 
Franklin could not read Latin, he could not read Newton's original 
Latin text of the _Principia_; there is no evidence that Franklin 
owned or read the contemporary English translation of Newton's 
leading work.) 
 
By claiming that all these scientific implications or resonances 
were in fact intended, and so understood by contemporary readers, 
Cohen is guilty of the very crime that he accuses experts on legal 
and political history of committing--that of claiming ultimate 
authority, by virtue of his expertise as a historian of science, to 
interpret American founding documents "in all cases whatsoever."  As 
we have noted, Cohen sells his thesis short by limiting it as he 
does; a more complex reading of the evidence does not diminish his 
achievement, but rather enhances it immensely.  We look forward to 
further work in this vein--by historians of politics, law, and 
science--which will expand on what Cohen has begun, and thus enrich 
our knowledge of the founding of the American republic and the 
complex interactions among scientific ideas, technological 
innovations, and constitutional arrangements in American history. 
 
Acknowledgement:  the reviewers wish to acknowledge the 
contributions of Shamaila Afzal, Eric Bemben, Anthony Chu, Elsie 
Gottesman, Christopher W.  Hanke, Catherine Layden, Ahmed Mohassib, 
Ysidro A. Mora, Moshe (Brad)  Nemetski, Marya Riche, Josh Schenbart, 
and Max S. Valcourt, students at Brooklyn College enrolled in 
Professor Bernstein's spring 1998 History 43.9 course, "Science, 
Technology, and the Constitution in American History," for their 
discussions of this book and their contributions to our 
understanding of its strengths and weaknesses.  We also wish to 
thank Daniel M.  Lyons, Brooklyn College/CUNY '39, for endowing the 
Daniel M.  Lyons Visiting Professorship in American History at 
Brooklyn College that made History 43.9 possible. 
 
Notes 
 
[1].  But see Michael Foley, _Law, Men and Machines:  Modern 
American Government and the Appeal of Newtonian Mechanics_ (London 
and New York: Routledge, 1990), which discusses previous historians' 
superficial and careless references to Newtonianism and the 
Constitution. 
 
[2].  For example, I. Bernard Cohen, _Introduction to Newton's 
"Principia"_ (Cambridge, Mass.:  Belknap Press of Harvard University 
Press, 1971); I. Bernard Cohen, _The Newtonian Revolution_ 
(Cambridge, Eng.:  Cambridge University Press, 1980); I.  Bernard 
Cohen, _Revolution in Science_ (Cambridge, Mass.:  Belknap Press of 
Harvard University Press, 1985); and I.  Bernard Cohen, 
_Interactions_ (Cambridge, Mass.:  MIT Press, 1994). 
 
[3].  Thomas Jefferson, "Instructions to Captain Lewis," 20 June 
1803, reprinted in Merrill D.  Peterson, ed., _Thomas Jefferson: 
Writings_ (New York:  Library of America, 1984), 1126-1132. 
 
[4].  See generally Thomas Jefferson (William Peden, ed.), _Notes on 
the State of Virginia_ (Chapel Hill, N.C.:  University of North 
Carolina Press for the Institute of Early American History and 
Culture, 1955); Charles A. Miller, _Jefferson and Nature:  An 
Interpretation_ (Baltimore:  Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993); 
Antonello Gerbi (Jeremy Moyle, ed. and trans.), _The Dispute of the 
New World_ (Pittsburgh:  University of Pittsburgh Press, 1973); 
Henry Steele Commager, _The Empire of Reason: How Europe Imagined 
and America Realized the Enlightenment_ (New York: Anchor 
Press/Doubleday, 1977); Henry Steele Commager and Elmo Giordanetti, 
eds., _Was America a Mistake?  An Eighteenth-Century Controversy_ 
(New York:  Harper and Row, 1967); and Richard B. Bernstein with Kym 
S. Rice, _Are We to Be a Nation?  The Making of the Constitution_ 
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1987), chapter Five. 
 
[5].  I. Bernard Cohen, ed., _Benjamin Franklin's "Experiments":  A 
New Edition of Franklin's "Experiments and Observations on 
Electricity"..._ (Cambridge, Mass.:  Harvard University Press, 
1941);  I. Bernard Cohen, _Franklin and Newton_ (Philadelphia: 
American Philosophical Society, 1956); I.  Bernard Cohen, _Benjamin 
Franklin's Science_ (Cambridge, Mass.:  Belknap Press of Harvard 
University Press, 1990). 
 
[6].  See generally Gordon S. Wood, _The Creation of the American 
Republic, 1776-1787_ (Chapel Hill, N.C.:  University of North 
Carolina Press, 1969; rept., with new introduction, 1998);  Donald 
S. Lutz, _The Origins of American Constitutionalism_ (Baton Rouge: 
Louisiana State University Press, 1988); Willi Paul Adams (Rita and 
Robert Kimber, trans.), _The First American Constitutions_ (Chapel 
Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press, 1980); Jackson 
Turner Main, _The Upper House in Revolutionary America, 1763-1787_ 
(Madison:  University of Wisconsin Press, 1967); and Bernstein with 
Rice, _Are We to Be a Nation?_, Chapters Two and Five. 
 
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