Weston, CT, USA. On 14 December 1807, a "globe of fire" flashed south across Vermont and Massachusetts, culminating in three loud explosions at 6:30 in the morning over Fairfield County, Connecticut.

In their everyday lives, most people relied on astrology and traditional wisdom to explain natural phenomena. The common folk in religious communities thought meteors were portents of impending calamities. At best, amateur scientists thought that meteors were projectiles spewed from lunar volcanoes.


Except for the work of Ben Franklin and a few others, and Thomas Jefferson's sponsorship, American science was in a preliminary state at the time. It took the deconstruction of lay assumptions, coupled with focused scientific investigations, to inspire the development of advanced scientific education and the instruction of astronomers and geologists on formal methods to achieve professional progress.



The melodramatic woodblock illustration shown here is taken from a contemporary broadside that reported on the Weston Meteorite Fall.

As common as photography today, such images were an important source of information and, as here, the emotions stirred up by the news item.The flashy meteorite fall in the town of Weston resulted in a fragment of consequence. It aroused the curiosity of Benjamin Silliman (8 August 1779 – 24 November 1864), an American chemist at Yale University, and one of the first American professors of science. [N1] Professor Silliman faced many obstacles beyond cultural intertia.

Yale had only rudimentary materials and it was necessary to build a credible chemistry department to prove out his new insights into the meteor's origins. Silliman and a colleague, James Kingsley, looked into the meteor fall and consented to initial publication of their observations in the Connecticut Herald.

This initial report was the basis for a more detailed chemical study of meteorites in the Weston fall that was read before the Philosophical Society of Philadelphia in 1808 (pub. 1809; rev. 1810). After that came the American Philosophical Society, the Royal Society of London, and the Académie Royale des Sciences.

Silliman's careful analysis, and the publication of his conclusions, had contradicted the assumptions of folk religion and amateur speculation about the moon. Even so, some observers, such as Thomas Jefferson, were mindful of common knowledge and expressed caution. [N2] Jefferson wrote in an 1808 letter to Daniel Salmon

• "We certainly are not to deny whatever we cannot account for. A thousand phenomena present themselves daily which we cannot explain, but where facts are suggested, bearing no analogy with the laws of nature as yet known to us, their verity needs proofs proportioned to their difficulty."

Indeed, Silliman faced a higher bar because conventional scientists of the time had already vetted the matter and settled on an explanation, however unsettling that might be. As Jefferson said:

• It may be very difficult to explain how the stone you possess came into the position in which it was found. But is it easier to explain how it got into the clouds from whence it is supposed to have fallen? The actual fact however is the thing to be established, and this I hope will be done by those whose situations and qualifications enable them to do it.

In other words, be careful. It is true that Benjamin Silliman began a rigorous and systematic study of the extraterrestial visitor that would challenge the common superstitions of the day, an investigation that provided much-needed momentum to contemporary American science.

And Silliman was a man of accomplishment in fields such as chemistry, geology, and mineralogy. He published more than 60 scientific papers and started the Yale school of chemistry. He trained numerous students and founded the American Journal of Science (1818). However, Silliman was far from the only scientist who wondered about meteors and meteorites, or even science in general.

• Other scientists, such as Edward Howard (1774-1816), analyzed meteorites that fell in various parts of the world and published comparative chemical studies over the years.
  
  
• Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) can easily be considered the founder of American science. He was widely respected abroad, so much so that the British Royal Society awarded him the Copley medal in 1753 for his work on electricity. He was a frequent guest of Antoine Lavoisier (1743-1794), the father of modern chemistry, during Franklin's time as Ambassador to France.

And yet, it was Silliman’s laboratory that got the press. This is a near-canonical example of how science must be viewed as a process. It does not diminish his accomplishments and expertise to say that Professor Silliman was not a lone genius who saw what no one else could even imagine.

The context for all of this was a general recognition that American progress was hampered by a lack of native scientific and engineering expertise, which made us dependent on Europe. The effects on manufacturing, farming, and trade were obvious — and expensive.

The exposure to world science rubbed off on Silliman, which in turn raised the prestige of American science in general and eased the way for other scientists to emerge as players in ther own right. Impending insights and discoveries were in the air and, in hindsight, inevitable, given that other scientists were investigating the same phenomena, and had the same hunger for knowledge.

Precisely the same fundamental process continues down to the present day.

To create link towards this article on your website,
copy and paste the text below in your page.

<style type="text/css"><!--.quote {width:400px; padding: 6px; border: solid 1px #456B8F; font: 11px helvetica, verdana, sans-serif; color: #222222; background-color: #ffffff}.quote a {font: 13px arial, serif; color: #003399; text-decoration: underline}.quote a:hover {color: #FF9900; }//--></style><div style="float:left;padding:5px;"><img src="../images/stories/BolideAtmosphere.jpg" width="125" alt=""/></div><div class="quote"><a href="../looking-glass/29758-the-weston-meteor-fall-and-american-science" target="_blank">The Weston Meteor Fall and American Science</a><br/>Sunday, 24 April 2011<div align="right" style="width:400px"><p style="text-align:right;"><a href="/" target="_blank">TS-Si.org</a></p></div></div>

Preview :

TrackBack URI for this entry

Name

Email

Website

Title

Comment

smaller | larger

Subscribe via email (Registered users only)

I have read and agree to the Terms of Usage.

Add Comment