Joseph Priestley (1733--1804), philosopher, scientist and unorthodox theologian, was one of the intellectual giants of the Enlightenment. He wrote prolifically and made significant contributions in many areas of eighteenth-century life, including physical science, political economy, moral philosophy, history, education, metaphysics and theology. His work was highly influential, and among his followers were Jeremy Bentham, who took up his phrase 'the greatest happiness of the greatest number', and Jefferson, who made use of his ideas in the American Declaration of Independence. J. (...) T. Rutt's Theological and Miscellaneous Works of Joseph Priestley is the only complete edition of Priestley's non-scientific works. These range from short pamphlets written as a Unitarian minister in Leeds and Birmingham, the Millenial Biblical commentaries of his final years in America, and the radical tracts which led to his exile from England. The edition also includes his philosophical works such as the replies to Reid and other Scottish Thought figures, as well as his own editions of the works of Hartley and Anthony Collins. Rutt knew Priestley and shared his views and this edition, produced when Priestley was a half-forgotten figure, is in many respects a labour of love. He was a careful editor, judiciously annotating a carefully prepared text. Priestley's autobiography, together with the extensive extracts from his correspondence in the first two volumes, is still the necessary starting point for the study of Priestley's life. Only two hundred copies of the original edition seem to have been printed and copies are virtually unheard of outside major libraries. In a critical introduction, John Stephens explores Rutt's editorial principles, making this remarkable edition as useful as possible to modern scholars. (shrink)

Two major problems in understanding Joseph Priestley are that he wrote so much and over such a wide area. The nineteenth-century edition of his collected works fills 25 volumes—and that leaves out the science! In discussing a man like Priestley, therefore, one cannot hope in a single lecture to do justice to the wide range of his interests or even to summarise adequately his many contributions to science. Fortunately much of the scientific work is fairly well known, for example his (...) discovery of many new gases or ‘airs’, as he preferred to call them. It might be appropriate, therefore, to try to put Priestley's pneumatic chemistry in a wider context and in particular to relate it to his career. Priestley was not only an important man of science. He was also an outspoken theologian, a literary figure and a family man, and all of these roles will have to be taken into consideration when the definitive biography is written. (shrink)

Historians of science are less inclined now than they were a few years ago to regard chemistry as having sprung full-grown from the mind of Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier. Many of the contours of pre-Lavoisierian chemistry have recently been mapped, its Newtonian and Stahlian theoretical traditions have been delineated, and the degree of coherence enforced on the subject by its didactic role has been argued. In addition, the social prominence and cohesion achieved by chemists in various national contexts, such as France, Scotland (...) and Germany, have been investigated. Karl Hufbauer (arguing specifically from the case of Germany) and Christoph Meinel have proposed that the cultural climate of the European Enlightenment provided the language and the social settings in which chemistry could be detached from its previous role as a service-art for medicine, and presented as a science with diverse practical applications. (shrink)