The period surrounding the American Revolution is rife with opportunity for scholars to investigate ideological and political trends that contributed to the shaping of the United States in its formative years. Susan Branson does that just that in her book, Scientific Americans, an exploration of the intersection of scientific thought and education with national identity in American history with emphasis on the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries. Branson received her PhD from Northern Illinois university in 1992 and has earned several awards and grants, including a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities. She is currently a professor of history at Syracuse University who specializes in early American history with an emphasis on society and culture, science, and women.
Scientific Americans argues that ideology alone is not enough to affect real change and, thus, there are other factors in play, like scientific thought and motivation, which act on and with ideology. The ideology of early America worked with the increasing interest in and emphasis on scientific education drove a desire for Americans to seek change through what they felt was improvement at all levels of society. Ultimately, “developing technology was a national endeavor” (198) which became a central part of American life and society at all levels. Branson makes these arguments in six chapters which range in scientific and cultural topics from the 1790s through the antebellum period with a conclusion that focuses on American society during its centennial celebration.
In the first chapter, interest in informal knowledge sharing and acquiring became more prevalent and available for a variety of Americans, not only rich, educated elites. These ideas were built upon the groundwork laid early in some of America’s colonies, such as by William Penn and later Benjamin Franklin in Pennsylvania who both believed in the capacity of improvement through collective effort possible through scientific education. Mass education at formal levels was still largely exclusive to select elites, but knowledge-sharing and dissemination of practical information was practiced regularly through printing, primarily through almanacs which focused on useful and applicable information such as astronomy, weather, and farming. Men formed philosophical societies and engaged in sociable events to promote the discussion and demonstration of scientific discovery. Women, too, participated in knowledge acquisition and engagement through reading, attending public lectures, and even private experimentation, though often through the application of household duties.
Chapter two discussed the increasing ambition of young America as it related to scientific efforts and achievements, most notably air travel in the form of the air balloon. The ability to fly had always captured the imaginations of humans, but especially after the first successful flight of a balloon in Paris. Many Americans witnessed this flight, others both successful and not, through illustrations in almanacs. Not long after did Americans begin their own balloon flights in amusement for the general populace but also as a demonstration of the ability and possibility of scientific endeavors. Balloons became a pervasive symbol of American pride and celebration in the early nineteenth century and came to represent the rising and falling ambitions of politicians. There were even thoughts of potentially weaponizing balloons as Americans approached the outbreak of the Civil War.
Chapter three explored the drive and fascination of Americans with machines, especially in the search for a machine operated by perpetual motion. Steam power became what believed was the first step in discovering perpetual motion through machines that improved the efficiency and output of America’s manufacturing and travel industries. So great was this fascination that many in the public were eager to buy into the claims of men like Charles Redheffer who convinced many that he had developed a machine that operated on perpetual motion. Steam was, however, real and far more imagination-capturing, especially in the rise of “The speculative fiction of the early nineteenth century [which] posited a vanished natural world replaced by steel, concrete, and robots” (98). Machines were yet another aspect of the various and seemingly unavoidable effects of science on American culture.
Chapter four demonstrated the realities behind the “speculative fiction” which imagined a world changed and reshaped by scientific ambition and power. American ingenuity became a driving force for perceived progress which led to the stunning and zealous efforts to affect the landscape for development of cities and infrastructure. These efforts were most often focused on changing the access and use of water and waterways. The early nineteenth century saw the development of public water and sewage in cities, the building of the Erie Canal, and eventually the beautification of public spaces with fountains and ponds. Meanwhile, as discussed in chapter five, while the efforts of water works provided tangible goods, the practice of phrenology preyed on a dangerous and persistent mindset in America. Phrenology, the claim “that an individual’s character and talents could be determined by examining the size and shape of the head” (124), became a force for sinister efforts to justify and promote racist ideology and practices. Advocates were often distinguished men of medical practices who spoke and demonstrated publicly phrenological practices in cities across America. The work around phrenology was used in a variety of ways, but most damagingly against non-white race, particularly African Americans, to demonstrate innate inferiority of other races. The drive for progress and ambition for a greater America were not always so noble.
The final chapter shows the culmination of the pervasiveness of science in society through the public celebrations and showcases of the nineteenth century in extravagant fairs and in public-facing institutions. Institutions like the Franklin Institute and the American Institute worked to demonstrate, once again, the possibilities of progress through science by showing the public what was achievable or imaginable through small public fairs. Fairs thus grew to become the natural home of large exhibitions to show off cutting-edge science and prototypes that were often more influential in culture than in science itself.
Branson’s argument and evidence work together so well that they fall together naturally and need virtually no further persuasion to convince the reader that the promotion of science and technology in America has been inextricably linked with national identity and ideas of progress. Scientific Americans is well researched and well written, illuminating moments in early American history which are often represented in a manner which obscures the driving forces Branson articulates or which have been forgotten almost entirely. Her conclusions work to show that these forces have been in American minds from the start and have only changed, never disappeared. The only place where Scientific Americans seemed to lack is in a consistent and regular inclusion of the affect and role of the different marginalized groups – women, African Americans, and Indigenous people – which was argued would be the case in the introduction. Branson fell a bit short of this goal, though likely not due to a lack of effort; however, this aspect of her argument should not have been presented so forwardly based on the final product as information came intermittently and as confirming the exception of this kind of history rather than the rule.
