The Invention of Air: A Story of Science, Faith, Revolution, and the Birth of America

I love a good biography, especially one that is willing to provide enough context to make reasonable commentary on the present condition. This book is a great biography, and by encompassing history from 300M years ago to the present day (of the Long Now), it illuminates and critiques the present condition naturally. What compelled me to read this book is the number of people who sought me out and said "you have to read this book--it talks about the open source software revolution two hundred years before open source software existed!" As President of the Open Source Initiative, I became curious why so many people were telling me this. Then answer is: it's true! Steven Johnson does a great job with both the particulars and the general, making the story both exciting in its details and relevant in its impact and the way it informs understanding. His understanding of open source, and the way he finds the roots of open source in the discussions and collaborations between Priestley, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson are a welcome addition to the history of our movement. I highly recommend this book to all who enjoy a good biography, a good telling of some history of science, and above all, to any who are interested in learning about how this revolutionary thinker, living in revolutionary times, sowed the seeds that would finally bear fruit in the software revolution of the 21st century.

In the modern day science, politics and religion often keep one another at arms length. Indeed, even the scientists keep colleagues who focus on different sciences at a distance. However, this was not always the case. Steven Johnson paints a picture of the world during the enlightenment. A time when friends in a coffeehouse were equally excited by Newton's postulations, Locke's treatises and the happenings in the American colonies. This is a world in which new ideas and even new disciplines could be born out of the mind and experiments of an amateur scientist operating out of a makeshift laboratory in his own home. The protagonist of this story, if there can be said to be a protagonist, is Joseph Priestly, a man who played prominently in the lives and thoughts of the founding fathers of America, even if few modern Americans can do so much as recognize his name. Priestly was a revolutionary in all senses of the word. He was a minister who was religiously radical. He was a scientist who would run as many tests as he could as often as he could and just wanted to see if he could get a result that would inspire him. He was also a man who held Benjamin Franklin in the highest esteem and came to support the revolution of Franklin's native land. Out of his labors came fruit that would include the birth of the Unitarian movement, the idea of ecosystems, the notion of pure oxygen (although this idea would have to be fine-tuned), many of the ideas that would influence Thomas Jefferson and John Adams and even the production of seltzer water. Priestly was a man who was living in the heart of the Enlightenment. One gets the idea that he could have subsisted on the sheer will and insight of the era alone. He was able to wed the driving forces in all of the arenas of his world into his life and we are all the richer for his undertakings. Johnson captivates the reader and switches between a long view of history (sometimes offering causes that were millions of years old to explain events of the era) and a more proximate view of what was transpiring. He posits that it was the gulf stream that powered the lifestyles that shaped Priestly's career in the south of Britain and the coal produced by the plants of the Carboniferous Era that powered the industry that would finance Priestly's career in the north of Britain. In both cases, Priestly's investigations would be delving into the phenomena that powered his research. It might have been cyclical and self-referencing, but it was a not a vicious cycle. It was the most virtuous of cycles and it has powered thinkers until today. The book makes for a tremendous read. If you are interested in the history of science, read this book. If you are fascinated by the driving forces behind the personalities involved in the American revolution, read this book. If you are curious about Enlightenment England, read this book. If you want to know more about religious radicalism and the movements it produced in t

As a former lab scientist and chemistry teacher, I would love to share The Invention of Air with my students. Steven Johnson takes a Guns, Germs, and Steel approach to science biography--the man and his context. In fact, he takes it one step further, as Johnson is very aware of his current historical context. This is specifically a biography of Joseph Priestly written from an American, early twenty-first century point of view. Priestly was an English scientist--a talented quasi-professional "natural philosopher." (Remember, this was back in the day when people knew how to brew beer but didn't really understand what "oxygen" or "carbon dioxide" were.) Priestly's work opened new avenues that led to an understanding of the essentials of ecology, the relationship between oxygen, carbon dioxide, animal respiration and photosynthesis. Though Priestly himself never understood all the implications of his work, he touched on a great number of issues that modern scientists are working on today. As Johnson says, Priestly was a Zelig-like figure in English and American history. He was friends with Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, and even played a role in the Jefferson-John Adams rivalry and rapprochement. Johnson's conscious efforts to understand Priestly in a modern context may annoy some readers--however, I found the book engaging and exhilarating. I loved the conclusions about information sharing (gathering with coffee buddies makes you much smarter than gathering with drinking buddies) and I enjoyed the sidelines on the geopolitics of energy and carbon. Finally, since I also write about motherhood, I appreciated the acknowledgment of the fact that this "Great Man" was supported in all his endeavors by a wife who kept things running smoothly behind the scenes. Priestly himself was quite a character, an open, idealistic man who could never hold his tongue when it was politically or scientifically prudent. A politically-active theologian as well as scientist, he railed against mysticism in Christianity but later became interested in end-of-times revelations. Most of all, his open scientific relationships made me appreciate the collaborative power we have at our fingertips in our highly-connected information age. Taken together, these elements made for an enlightening, enjoyable read.

Joseph Priestly's discovery of Oxygen and the fact that the Earth's air is made up of different gasses was as revolutionary as the American and French Revolutions, two causes he supported. He was a minister and a man of ideas when he first wandered into the London Coffee House, where a group who called themselves the "Honest Whigs" met and gabbed. One famous member of the group was Ben Franklin who would become a lifelong friend of Priestly's. It was while drinking coffee with these men that Priestly grew interested in Science, but he also held deep beliefs in civil liberties, religion and a host of other subjects, some very unpopular. For example he didn't believe in the divinity of Christ. And it was his unpopular support of those two revolutions that earned him the nickname Gunpowder Joe. Priestly left London for Birmingham where he formed a friendship with a group of thinkers who met every month on the full moon. These were the Lunar Men and they called themselves Lunaticks and they financed Priestly's scientific experiments. Priestly eventually left England for America and Pennsylvania, where he continued his lifelong support of civil liberties. He corresponded often with Thomas Jefferson and disagreed with President Adams over his Alien and Sedition's Act. Priestly was a major thinker of his day and made an indelible stamp on American History, Science and Religion and this book makes the man and his times come to life. Mr. Johnson has turned out a very readable book, one that took me three long nights to get through. I am a fast reader, but I found myself stopping several times during the narrative to think. Imagine that, sitting and thinking. It's been over two centuries since Gunpowder Joe breathed the air he defined, since those days when thinking and discussing things thought about were so important. I wonder what he'd make of the twenty-four hour news cycle, cable news, spin and spin doctors. It seems there's not much room for thought anymore. Who has the time? Maybe we should make some. Reviewed by Captain Katie Osborne

Steven Johnson has written an engaging book about Joseph Priestley, a true Renaissance Man who contributed mightily to the Age of Enlightenment in the 18th Century. Priestley was a remarkable individual who distinguished himself in several different fields: theology, chemistry, science, politics, philosophy, history and technology. He was also a prolific writer who had the good fortune of hobnobbing with the best and the brightest of his day: Franklin, Lavoisier, Jefferson, Canton and Adams, to name just a few. Johnson does an exceptional job of telling Priestley's story, explaining his scientific discoveries, political philosophies, and theological insights, and putting them all in their proper context. But he goes one step further: he endeavors to explain why Priestley accomplished what he did. He doesn't just focus on Priestley's character traits and native intelligence (both of which were extraordinary); rather, he attributes much of the man's success to his environment, to his friends, to the evolution of technology, and, quite simply, to good fortune. At a time when we are inundated with trendy books that pander to the public's appetite for facile explanations of complex processes (e.g., "Blink," "Gut Feelings: The Intelligence of the Unconscious," etc.), it is refreshing to see someone acknowledge that scientific discoveries, sociological insights and great ideas more often than not take years to evolve and are the product of numerous variables, many of which remain a mystery. Priestley's enthusiasm, openness and child-like fascination with the world around him are infectious. Though he was not without shortcomings and, on occasion, got things completely wrong, Priestley was an intellectual giant upon whose shoulders many great scientists, philosophers and discoverers will continue to stand well into the 21st Century. And Mr. Johnson has rendered a valuable service by re-telling Mr. Priestley's story from a fresh and enlightening perspective. Highly recommended.