What a pleasure was this 25-hour audiobook about Franklin. Recently when I watched a series with Michael Douglas playing Franklin about his time in Paris, I realized how little I knew about Franklin. And while I hope I will not be quizzed on facts about Franklin’s life, I have loved being impressed with the accomplishments of that amazing man. For example, though higher education was not available to him, Franklin taught himself enough to be able to make scientific breakthroughs without having a background in mathematics.
While I can only give a taste of the memorable achievements of Franklin, I will write about a few items I want to remember, starting with the editing he did to the Declaration of Independence, on the request of Jefferson. He replaced Jefferson’s sentence “We hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable.” to “We hold these truths to be self-evident.” Jefferson was drawing on John Locke while Franklin was influenced by the scientific determinism of Isaac Newton and David Hume. Franklin’s edit reflects the view that the truths were self-evident by the means of reason and definition, an assertion of rationality, according to Isaacson.
A frivolous piece of writing is one example of his impressive wit. A South Carolina planter named Ralph Izard was allied with the Virginia Lees who attacked Franklin while he was in France in 1778. Franklin wrote an anonymous satire, “The Petition of the Letter Z, Commonly called Ezzard, Zed, or Izard,” in which the letter Z complains about being “placed at the tail end of the alphabet” and “totally excluded from the word wise.”
Isaacson does not see Franklin as a great philosophical thinker. He was guided by the overriding consideration of what would be helpful and good for most people. He was moved to act to encourage people to work together on civic functions for the greater good, for example to make books available to people. He worked through a club he was in to create the Library Company of Philadelphia in 1731. He also proposed and wrote extensive rules for a fire-fighting club in Philadelphia, called the Union Fire Company. It was incorporated in 1736 and was so successful that other clubs were organized around town.
He is best known for demonstrating that lightning is electricity and then figuring out how to direct it using lightning rods to keep buildings from burning during lightning storms. This was a significant improvement for the populace. Another of his inventions was bifocals; it’s hard to overstate the usefulness of that idea. He never stopped being interested in scientific measurement and observation. He charted the Gulf Stream during his crossings of the Atlantic, including measuring the temperature of the water at different depths on his last crossing in 1785 when he was 79 years old.
I don’t know what to make of Isaacson’s recounting of Franklin’s connection to women. While he was in Paris working during the revolution to enlist the French to recognize and make loans to the new nation, then later negotiating the peace treaty, he had many flirtations with French women. Several times during his lifetime he seems to have become close to a woman, then been taken with their daughters. This sounds less awful when Isaacson quotes from letters that show he was a lifelong friend to several young women and wrote them avuncular letters encouraging them. According to Isaacson, these flirtations were not consummated. As I say, I don’t know what to think.
Walter Isaacson, Benjamin Franklin, Simon & Schuster, 2003, 590 pages (I listened to the audiobook). Available in the public library.