- Franklin , Benjamin . 1970 . “ The Autobiography ” . In The Writing of Benjamin Franklin Edited by: Smyth , Albert Henry . 226 – 439 . New York 10 vols originally published 1907) [hereafter cited as Writings], I (p. 249). An earlier but still useful edition is The Works of Benjamin Franklin, edited by John Bigelow, 12 vols (New York and London, 1904) [hereafter cited as Works]. Both have been superseded to 1778 by The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, edited by Leonard W. Labaree et al., 24 vols and continuing (New Haven, 1959–) [hereafter cited as Papers]; I am often indebted to its notes. Volumes 15ff. are edited by William B. Willcox, et al. The standard biography is Carl Van Doran, Benjamin Franklin (New York, 1957). For the development of Franklin's religious thought, see Alfred Owen Aldridge, Benjamin Franklin and Nature's God (Durham, North Carolina, 1967). Almost nothing has been written about his geology.
- Papers , I 55 – 71 .
- Franklin's ‘Articles of Belief’ are in Papers I 101 109 (see especially p. 105). ‘On the Providence of God’ is in Papers, I, 264–9. Aldridge, in Benjamin Franklin and Nature's God, p. 34n, argues that the proper date is 1730. Issues of Poor Richard (1733-) often included deistic verse praising the Creator.
- Papers , I 275 – 276 .
- 1960 . Papers , II : 190 – 190 . (Pennsylvania Gazette for 15 December 1737). ‘Causes of Earthquakes’ is in Works (footnote 1), II, 49–63 (pp. 49–50, 51, 52, 53–4, 54, 55); see also Papers, II, 184. Alfred Owen Aldridge found Franklin's source in Chambers (Isis, 41 (1950), 162–4).
- Burnet , Thomas . 1684–90 . [Sacred] Theory of the Earth London with many later editions); John Woodward, Essay toward a Natural History of the Earth (London, 1695); William Whiston, A New Theory of the Earth (London, 1696). All three are conveniently summarized by Katharine Brownell Collier, Cosmogonies of Our Fathers (1934, reprinted New York, 1968).
- The title page of Poor Richard 1733 is reproduced in Papers, I, 287. BF's advertisement is in Papers, I, 377. Poor Richard and Whiston: II, 193; III (1961), 249 and 338. 1747: II, 129. On Whiston's Memoirs, III, 466; also 471. Poor Richard for 1751: IV (1961), 84–5; for 1757: VII (1963), 90–1, with important comments.
- Papers , III 300 – 300 . IV, 53–63 (p. 55)
- Papers , II 48n – 48n . 392n. See also The Collection of Franklin Imprints in the Museum of the Curtis Publishing Company, compiled by William J. Campbell (Philadelphia, 1918); Benjamin Franklin's Philadelphia Printing, 1728–1766, a descriptive bibliography by C. William Miller (Philadelphia, American Philosophical Society, 1974); and George W. White, Essays on History of Geology (New York, 1978).
- The original edition was [Pedro Lozano], A True and Particular Relation of the Dreadful Earthquake Which Happen'd At Lima … On The 28th of October, 1736 … Published At Lima By Command Of The Viceroy, And Translated From The Original Spanish, By A Gentleman Who Resided Many Years In Those Countries. To Which Is Added, A Description of Callao And Lima Before Their Destruction; And Of the Kingdom of Peru In General, With Its Inhabitants … Interspersed With Passages of Natural History and Physiological Disquisitions; Particularly An Enquiry Into The Causes of Earthquakes … (London, 1748). Campbell, No. 435; Papers III 447 448
- Papers , III 461 – 461 . 477. ‘Hales I send’; that Franklin received is clear from IV, 8. Philosophical Transactions, 46 (1749–50), 669–81; Thomas Sherlock, ‘Letter’, p. 17.
- Hales, 669, 677. See also Cohen I. Bernard Franklin and Newton Cambridge, Massachusetts 1966 266 1279
- Papers , III 365 – 376 . (footnote 12); III, 460. For Stukeley, see Papers, III, 376n, IV, 317n, and ‘On the Causes of Earthquakes’, Philosophical Transactions, 46 (1749–50), 641–6 (pp. 641, 643). In earthquakes he found ‘the finger of Providence … notoriously discernible … Tho' it operates by natural causes’ (p. 645). Stukeley then published The Philosophy of Earthquakes, Natural and Religious, 2nd edition (London, 1750), combining the substance of his Royal Society paper with his sermon on the same topic (Psalms 18: 7). Franklin is mentioned on p. 24.
- Papers , IV 125 – 125 . erroneously attributes an electrical earthquake theory to Franklin (Cohen does not). For Fothergill and Mazeas, see Papers, IV, 129–30; and 315–17 (pp. 316–17).
- Papers , IV 301 – 301 . v (1962), 133. Arthur O. Lovejoy long ago pointed out the temporalization of the Great Chain of Being.
- See Tilton Eleanor M. Lightning-Rods and the Earthquake of 1755 New England Quarterly 1940 13 85 97 and Charles Edwin Clark, ‘Science, Reason, and an Angry God: The Literature of an Earthquake’, New England Quarterly, 38 (1965), 340–62. Two facsimile versions of Prince are now available: North American Geology: Early Writings, edited by Robert M. Hazen, Benchmark Papers in Geology, Vol. 51 (Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, 1979), pp. 13–36; and ‘The Millennium in America’, edited by Sacvan Bercovitch (a reprint collection in 41 volumes), Volume 9: The Earthquakes of the Apocalypse (New York, 1979).
- Winthrop is in Hazen Benchmark Papers in Geology Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania 1979 51 37 65 (pp. 18, 26); Hazen, 52, 60. See also Papers, x (1966), 30–1; and Philosophical Transactions, 50 (1757), 1–18.
- For Wesley, Stukeley, and Kant, see Papers 1963 VII 91n 91n III, 317n; and XX (1976), 490n; also, Friedrich Paulsen, Immanuel Kant: His Life and Doctrine (New York, 1963), p. 402. Another writer (and versifier) upon earthquakes well known to Franklin was Mather Byles, for whom see Papers, XI (1967), 90; and XII (1968), 199–200.
- Michell , John . 1759–1760 . Conjectures Concerning the Cause, and Observations upon the Phaenomena of Earthquakes . Philosophical Transactions , 51 : 566 – 634 . (not to be confused with John Mitchell, to whom Franklin addressed his thunder letter of 1749) paragraphs 38 to 50 are on pp. 582–8 (p. 582); the American references are on pp. 572, 574, 577, 586, 608, and 610. ‘Causes of Earthquakes’ seems to have been influential also. Papers, VII, 357.
- 1965 . Papers , VIII : 430 – 432 . IX (1966), 42–3; IX, 106–7 (to Peter Franklin) (pp. 106, 107). For interesting comment upon science, see Papers, IX, 121–2.
- Papers , X 39 – 39 . 226–30 (pp. 228, 229); x, 302. Whitehurst's Inquiry into the Original State and Formation of the Earth (London, 1778) affirms a global disruption of the strata similar to Burnet's. Franklin more than once conjectured regarding fossil elephants.
- 1974 . Papers , XVIII : 114 – 116 . XIX (1975), 207; XIX, 368–9 (quoting the translation in Smyth, (footnote 1), v, 552–3); see also Papers, XIX, 386. Papers, XX (1976), 180.
- Aldridge , Alfred Owen . 1957 . Franklin and His French Contemporaries 64 – 65 . New York Condorcet (a correspondent of Franklin's) praises Palissy's geology in ‘The Eighth Stage’ of his Progress of the Human Mind (1795); Ruault probably intended a similar compliment to Franklin.
- de Saint-Fond , B. Faujas . 1778 . Recherches sur les Volcans 462 – 462 . Grenoble and Paris Whitehurst's gift is mentioned by Smyth (footnote 1), I, 56. For Faujas de Saint-Fond, see The Ingenious Dr. Franklin, edited by Nathan G. Goodman (Philadelphia, 1974), p. 83; and B. Faujas de Saint-Fond, A Journey Through England and Scotland to the Hebrides in 1784, translated by Archibald Geikie, 2 vols (Glasgow, 1907), I, 17–22 (pp. 20–21). The French original appeared in 1797.
- For Soulavie and his problems with the Church, see Aufrere L. De Thales a Davis, Le Relief et la Sculpture de la Terre. Tome IV: La Fin du XVIIIe Siecle. I. Soulavie et Son Secret Paris 1952 I have August 1781 from Aldridge, Franklin and His French Contemporaries, pp. 67–8 (p. 68). Soulavie's book was eventually completed in seven volumes (1784). For Hutton, see D. R. Dean, ‘The Age of the Earth Controversy: Beginnings to Hutton’, Annals of Science, 38 (1981), 435–56. Aufrere discusses Soulavie's catastrophism in Soulavie et Son Secret, p. 103. Franklin's letter to Soulavie is available in Works, X, 5–11; Writings, VIII, 597–602; and Hazen, 192–6.
- Works , XI 422 – 426 . Writings, IX, 652–5 (pp. 653–4); Hazen, 197–200. Regarding magnetism, see also Papers, X, 204–5. There is useful background about Franklin's hypothesized core in Stephen G. Brush, ‘Nineteenth-Century Debates about the Inside of the Earth: Solid, Liquid or Gas?’, Annals of Science, 36 (1979), 225–54 (p. 245).
- For additional geological passages in Franklin, see Papers III 147 152 IV, 53–63; X, 165; XIV, 25–9, 121, 221–2; XV, 33–4, 42; XX, 489–91; XXI, 151–2.
- Works , X 10 – 10 . Writings, VIII, 601. ‘Our much regretted friend Winthrop once made me the compliment that I was good at starting game for philosophers’, Franklin wrote to James Bowdoin; ‘let me try if I can start a little for you’ (Works, XI, 423; Writings, IX, 652). For a sociological explanation of changing eighteenth-century geological ambitions, see Roy Porter, ‘Creation and Credence: The Career of Theories of the Earth in Britain, 1660–1820’, in Natural Order: Historical Studies of Scientific Culture edited by Barry Barnes and Steven Shapin (Beverly Hills and London, 1979), pp. 97–123.
- Cohen , I. Bernard . 1941 . “ As a matter of fact, Franklin's contribution to American science is in great measure the organization which he contributed ” . In Benjamin Franklin's Experiments 17 – 17 . Cambridge, Massachusetts Franklin achieved membership in the Royal Society for John Winthrop (Papers, X, 30–1; IX, 357), Arthur Lee (Papers, IX, 358), and Alexander Garden (Papers, IX, 359). Because of his efforts, Philadelphia was enriched with such European geological publications as Hill's Theophrastus (III, 156), Woodward's Essay Toward a Natural History of Fossils, Keil's Examination of Burnet's Theory, Condamine's Figure of the Earth, Plot's natural histories of Oxfordshire and Staffordshire (Papers, IV, 353), Da Costa's Natural History of Fossils, Maupertuis's Figure of the Earth (Papers, IX, 275, 276), ‘the Transactions of every philosophical society in Europe, … and also the French Encyclopedia’ (Papers, XVI, 171). For some sense of how American scientists during the eighteenth century viewed themselves and the ‘European Advantages’, see Ezra Stiles's letter to Franklin in Papers, X, 30–1 (1762).
Annals of Science
Volume 46, 1989 - Issue 5
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