A lesson learned from INGENIOUS: A BIOGRAPHY OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, SCIENTIST, by Richard Munson

 Reason and science are vital to humanity’s advancement in politics and society.

One of the common questions I get from students whenever we’re learning about the American Revolution is who my favorite Founding Father is. It’s a difficult question to answer that’s fraught with perils, as all the Founding Fathers had major blind spots and failures by modern moral standards, and some of their flaws were truly unforgivable (with all the modern debates over what is and isn’t “woke education,” try to explain with a straight face to a young person of color that they’re supposed to worship Thomas Jefferson as a hero). However, one choice I’ve found myself leaning toward a lot in recent years is Benjamin Franklin, a man who was in some ways very much of his times, and yet was also quite self-aware of that fact and constantly strove to learn and be better. While so many Founders come off today as old, dead, unknowable figures, Franklin’s bright and bouncy personality still shines through the ages, and it is captured well by Richard Munson in his new Franklin biography. Fascinatingly, Munson is one of the few historians who focuses on Franklin’s scientific discoveries and curiosities, and he argues that was a core element of Franklin’s identity that deeply intertwined with his growth as a political revolutionary.

Munson doesn’t ignore Franklin’s better known political history, but he is far more fascinated by Franklin as a scientific figure, and digs up fascinating and amusing stories and observations from Franklin as he tried to gain a better understanding of the world around him. Franklin grew up in an era that was just beginning to experience the Enlightenment, and the scientific method was becoming standardized with new technologies and instruments that provided people with knowledge of worlds that had always been invisible to humanity. Some of Franklin’s inventions (most notably the lightning rod) actually saved lives and became universally adopted, and he had to convince a skeptical public that they could find a way to avoid something that had always been seen as “God’s vengeance.” Using crude telescopes and microscopes, Franklin speculated about the nature of matter in ways that suggested he was already thinking about terms that would later come to be called “atoms,” “the laws of energy,” and the “physics of flight.”

Munson’s book is short and highly readable, and it paints a portrait of a man who partly developed his political opinions by always questioning the world around him and his own place within it. It is easy to draw a direct line from the man who questioned why the people of his era put up with so much air pollution and sickness, to the man who questioned the righteousness of what the British claimed was “proper hierarchy.” By constantly trying to adopt the perspectives of how different characters would see dilemmas–in his writings, Franklin role-played as a common farmer, a woman, and a Muslim noble–he eventually came to question contemporary abuses such as slavery (becoming an abolitionist at the end of his life) and discrimination against minority religions. He had his own failures–he could say nasty things against immigrants and Indians (even as he avoided extreme positions against those groups), and he could womanize and associate with all sorts of shady characters–but he also was self-aware of such things; he famously lamented that he wished he could have been born 100 years later when things would undoubtedly be better for everyone. He stressed the importance of scientific funding, mass vaccinations, and a government that could adapt and respond to the changing needs of its people. Along the way, he never lost a famous sense of humor and need to joke about the everyday challenges of life. He urged the healthy importance of waking up and going to bed early (SCORE ONE FOR MR. T!); urged doctors to study how to make farts less often and smelly (no, really); and, as he began dying in his 80s and got reassurances from people that he had many years left in him, he responded “I certainly hope not!”

Munson’s scientific biography of Franklin brings back to life one of America’s most admirable and entertaining Founders, and tells the heroic tale of a man grounded in science and reason who pushed back against an age that was determined to cling to the past. In our current world, many people have lost faith in those essential principles and have instead decided to follow the folk tales and superstitions of social media influencers. In light of our modern age, Franklin becomes an admirable icon of the belief that only through reason and science can he break free of the shackles of past tradition and prejudice, and truly find our way forward to a better future.