The Science of Liberty

February 15, 2010 by J. Neeley

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An interesting new book by science writer Timothy Ferris explores the effect the scientific revolution has had in aiding liberty and democracy in the world:

John Locke was not just the most eloquent philosophical advocate of the social contract and natural rights. He was an active member of the emerging scientific culture of 17th-century Oxford, and his intimates included Isaac Newton, who likewise was a radical Whig, supporting Parliament against the overreaching of the crown. Among the American founders, the scientific preoccupations of Franklin and Jefferson are well known, but Ferris emphasizes that they were hardly alone in their interests. He recounts a charming episode, for instance, in which George Washington and Thomas Paine floated together one night down a New Jersey creek, lighting cartridge paper at the water’s surface to determine whose theory was correct about the source of swamp gas.

Ferris finds in the United States Constitution the underlying principle that citizens should “be free to experiment, assess the results and conduct new experiments.” The American Republic might be compared to “a scientific laboratory,” he writes, because it is designed “not to guide society toward a specified goal, but to sustain the experimental process itself.”

As reviewer Gary Rosen notes, it would be wrong to lay too much stress on the scientific underpinnings of the founding. The rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness mentioned in the Declaration of Independence, for example, cannot be scientifically derived. Yet the influence is real, and is worth exploring.

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