The Politics of Experiment in the Eighteenth Century: The Pursuit of Audience and the Manipulation of Consensus in the Debate over Lightning Rods

Abstract

The shape and use of lightning rods sparked debate within the British scientific community in the third quarter of the eighteenth century. A simple investigation into the efficacy of blunted versus pointed conductors to safeguard public buildings from thunder bolts soon escalated into a vitriolic dispute driven not only by the conflicting personal and professional interests of some of the most prodigious scientific thinkers of the day, but also by the political preoccupations of late eighteenth-century England. Indeed, this overt politicization of the issue was unavoidable. For the whole lightning-rod controversy was not just about the intrinsic superiority of one theory and practice over another. It was rooted largely in, and shaped by, struggles over defining and controlling the legitimate social and physical settings in which the controversy could be resolved, in order to create (or enforce) a consensus among those social bodies considered to be relevant and credible. The entire issue was intensified by the historical context in which the study of electricity was imbued with considerable cultural import by contemporaries because of what they hoped it would reveal about God's design for the universe and the rational reorganization of human society in the Age of Enlightenment.1 In an increasingly diversified world where the