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Education Science

Benjamin Franklin, Civic Scientist 155

Posted by michael from the no-quoting-please dept.
Guinnessy writes "Neal Lane, the ex-science advisor to President Clinton, has written an article in Physics Today magazine, that explains why he thinks Benjamin Franklin, was an early American prototype of a civic scientist, i.e. someone who would 'probably address many of today's concerns with wisdom, practicality, and a deep sense of civic responsibility.' Ironically the same issue has an example of a modern day civic scientist, a profile of Richard Meserve, a physicist who became a lawyer. Interesting stuff."
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Benjamin Franklin, Civic Scientist More

Benjamin Franklin, Civic Scientist

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  • Science & Law a common mix down under (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Malfourmed ( 633699 ) on Saturday October 04, 2003 @02:31AM (#7130986) Homepage
    Dual degrees in science and law is common in Australia where most universities force undergraduates to take a combined law degree, ie Science/Law, Arts/Law, Commerce (or Economics)/Law etc.
    • Law seems a useless thing to study. I could see studying government but I wouldn't want to study old cases and rulings and all that stuff that is constantly changing anyway. It seems a useless topic to me. If I study physics or engineering I can go do something with it when I'm done. If I study law what can I do with it except argue about it with other people who studied law? It's like Slashdot but wearing a suit, covering less interesting topics, and being paid a lot.
      • In Australia having a law degree is a prerequisite of becoming a comedian, and hence the topic is of great utility to those who think they are funny.

      • Having passed through the law school experience, I am positive it has general value. The dusty cases and statutes are not really that important - they merely provide background and material for instruction/practice on thinking. Law school is not about being given answers and memorizing them - the Socratic method, in which an instructor teaches by asking questions of students until the students stumble on the answers themselves, is both intense and effective. And very painful/humiliating at times.

        For
        • I guess I could see, for teaching reason, law as part of a liberal arts degree or anything that doesn't really require deep thinking but I'd agree that it'd be a bit redundant for science or engineering degrees. If you don't learn how to think things out by writing software, designing a bridge, or researching a new medical breakthrough then I doubt going to law school is going to help. If it does then maybe you should go to law school instead. :)

          I do think there is some value in just teaching people to rea

  • Autobiography (Score:5, Interesting)

    by daeley ( 126313 ) * on Saturday October 04, 2003 @02:32AM (#7130990) Homepage
    Franklin's autobiography makes for fascinating reading [ibiblio.org].

    "If you would not be forgotten as soon as you are dead & rotten, either write things worth reading, or do things worth the writing" - Ben Franklin

    • Re:Autobiography (Score:5, Interesting)

      by toxic666 ( 529648 ) on Saturday October 04, 2003 @03:30AM (#7131145)
      Interesting reading, indeed. But it should be taken (as any autobiography) in the context of the author writing about himself. The autobiography was started when his relationship with his son, William -- appointed Governor of New Jersey through his efforts -- was deteriorating and intended to remind William that people of humble beginnings can advance through hard work and good business relationships.

      Perhaps Walter Isaacson -- author of the latest biography -- summed it up best when he suggested that Franklin's life and accomplishments are topics that should be revisited by biographers every ten years. If you haven't read a Franklin biography, pick one up. You will be surprised by how much his ideas about intellectual property would conform to the GNU while tolerating patents and copyrights.
      • Yes, Franklin does have some ideas of which RMS and friends would wholeheartedly approve. Here's a quote from the autobiography you mentioned:

        Gov'r. Thomas was so pleas'd with the construction of this stove, as described in it, that he offered to give me a patent for the sole vending of them for a term of years; but I declin'd it from a principle which has ever weighed with me on such occasions, viz., That, as we enjoy great advantages from the inventions of others, we should be glad of an opportunity to

  • From the article he makes Ben Franlkin sound like some sort of savior who could come foreward from the past and save us all. Bringing the scientists in congress together in a bipartisan manner to discuss science and technology... How many scientists are there in congress? And how likely is it that they could actually sit down and work together on anything, especially technology (They would simply fight over which states got which grants for scientific study) Town hall meetings all across american to bring u
    • I think the problem like in every system is that you have to adapt to become succesfull.
      Back in the old days, when news took days or weeks to reach the people, things like public identity, pr,ect were irrelevant.
      Today, if a scientist changes to politics, he has to change his way of thinking from "rational scientist" to ">how to cheat the prople into voting me politician". It may not happen at one, but it will happen or he will fail.
      And when it happened, he could have come from a totally diffrent backgrou

    • Mebbe if he could tell modern day Americans that they have their heads up their arses, they would listen...?

  • His Seven Great Virtues (Score:4, Interesting)

    by TekReggard ( 552826 ) on Saturday October 04, 2003 @02:52AM (#7131033)
    Time covered Benjamin Franklin in this special issue [time.com] of Time Magazine. The insights into one of the founding father's of the nation I call my homeland are very inspiring. I think every member of the current Administration could do good by learning a few lessons from this man. Not to mention, in its relation to the current article, he was a realistic inventor. Most everything I can recall him being responsible for inventing has an Important purpose, as opposed to some of the things we see nowadays, which do what, save you a little time? A little pain? There are far too many *Cosmetic* inventions in today's society than I can handle. I enjoy reading about stuff like synthetic diamonds, advances in alternative fuels, and a more modernized house. I do not enjoy reading about the next flat panel display ... only 500$ more, looks the EXACT same to me?! Well you probably get my point.

    I'm just glad to be reading something about a great man instead of a criminal, for once.

    • Re:His Seven Great Virtues (Score:5, Insightful)

      by kfg ( 145172 ) on Saturday October 04, 2003 @04:08AM (#7131251)
      Franklin understood something about politics, law, publishing, business and invention that most have forgotten:

      It all comes down to a dietary issue in the end.

      Food, clothing and shelter.

      Everything else is frills and frippery when it comes right down to it.

      Now he was hardly a man who eschewed frills and frippery, but he always knew they were frills and frippery and kept things in some sort of perspective.

      I'm not sure I would have found him likeable, although he was one of the most sought after dinner guests on more than one continent, but was clearly a remarkable man. In more modern times he would have been a candidate for multiple Nobels in science (electricity, the Gulf Stream and other discoveries) as well as the Peace Prize and multiple Pulitzers (Just for Poor Richard's alone, let alone his other writings) and lord knows what all awards.

      And yet among his greatest accomplishments as an inventor in his own mind was a warm stove and a comfortable chair to put by it.

      Add a table, bowl of fruit and a violin and you're set.

      KFG
      • Add a table, bowl of fruit and a violin and you're set.

        Such frippery!! Frills!!!

        But yeah ... you have to have a deep respect for any man who is capable of admitting to himself, and encouraging others to admit it too, that in the end it all comes down to diet.
      • Food, clothing and shelter.
        -- Survival; Domination of self over all else (where sustainability is a vital prerequisite to this) -- thus we have predator-prey curves in nature (I'm sure an analogy with plants, archae, etc... can be made). At least domination (control) from a species perspective.

        Domination of self (if partial) can lead to weaknesses. Therefore a non-dominate, yet mutable form would be preferable. Total domination of self would lead to stagnation, but it would de facto also lead to a non-
        • de facto should be ipso facto.

          Even with "control", this generally seems as a second to total domination. It's just the fact that total domination/control has never happened (outside of a hypothetical God)..... I seem to be using a definition of "dominate" that is like a change of everything to the self, whereas "total control" would be the self having power over all else and excising the ability of all else to have power over it (even as much as the other being able to alter the self -- thus negating the
        • With that argument, (good point, btw) Nietzche gave us the Super Man, the one who was beyond man. IOW, he dominated himself, he was in control of himself. I would like to know where the idea that self-domination leads to stagnation came from, however.

          And also the other given, which I see all too often in todays politicized "science", and politics per se:

          "...and they seek above all, these clambering apes, to get Power;- or the lever of Power, which is Money... How can I help it that Power likes to walk on
          • I was refering to a philosophical (and thus stupid) domination in which the outer world couldn't influence in any way the dominant being. Any influence, unless possibly *very* elastic, would change the dominant being -- thus the self is not totally dominant, as something external could dominate (change, or become) a part of it.

            Difference between self as a process and self as a state. We are process, if a state dominates...from an antagonistic viral/bacterial perspective, too much stagnation leads to modif
            • Scratch this as Self can also contain reactions toward outer effects. A different state in RAM doesn't change the OS or programs on hard disk.

              If necessary (think turing machine/object library), different components can be rearranged for use against externals.

              Vacuole???? Caged/segregated incorporation of an external (to be used if needed) w/o modifying the self?

  • Where are they now? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by be-fan ( 61476 ) on Saturday October 04, 2003 @03:09AM (#7131083)
    At one time, we had high-minded intellectuals running this country. Ones with vision and foresight and knowledge and education. Where are they today? We've got a president who is, at best, of averge intelligence, and whose greatest strength is something as plebian as business. I doubt that people like the founding fathers aren't around today --- I don't think this world has gone that far done the shit-hole just yet. But where are they hiding? Are they staying out of public service just because they're so damn disgusted by the whole system? Are we as a society doing something that are actively keeping these people out?

    • Re:Where are they now? (Score:4, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 04, 2003 @03:10AM (#7131088)
      Condoleeza Rice is very intelligent and was a child prodigy.

    • Re:Where are they now? (Score:5, Informative)

      by toxic666 ( 529648 ) on Saturday October 04, 2003 @03:43AM (#7131172)
      Ben barely finished schooling (failing mathematics), was apprenticed to a brother and ran away to Philadelphia, discarding his apprentice obligation. He was educated, but not well even by colonial Boston standards.

      He was, thus, condemned to become:

      "the most ingenious scientist of his era rather than transcending into the pantheon of truly profound theorists such as Newton."

      (Isaacson, "Benjamin Franklin, An American Life", Simon and Schuster, 2003)

    • Re:Where are they now? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Dhalka226 ( 559740 ) on Saturday October 04, 2003 @03:49AM (#7131190)
      Are they staying out of public service just because they're so damn disgusted by the whole system? Are we as a society doing something that are actively keeping these people out? I think that the truly intelligent and civic-minded people would generally be more likely to do things like vote or run for public office. But yes, we as a society are doing something to keep them out. Maybe not as a society, that may be poor wording. The problem, as I see it, is money. In order to become elected to office, you generally need gobs of money. At the very least, you need to be very good at raising gobs of money if you're not rolling in your own. The average person is not going to be good at either making or raising huge sums of money and I can't imagine that intelligence alone would be enough to change that. Many of our most intelligent people have often been rather shy and withdrawn in their own ways. But assuming Ben Genius does get enough money to compete in national elections, money enters into play again. Because either: 1) He spent his own money, in which case the man essentially spent, let's say, two million dollars (a low estimate) on a campaign that won him a job that pays $400,000 a year. Do the math; he loses $400,000 over the term of a presidency--according to the math. Logically, one may assume that there are other perks that can very much make up for that money. And I'm not talking about power alone, but rather what power can get you. 2) If he didn't spend his own money, he raised funds and it will, at least in some part, make him beholden to their interests. Let's face it: Companies give the biggest sums and they only do so if they feel a candidate is going to advance their own goals. I don't think I need to go much further than that for people to agree politicians are, to some extent, held by the balls by their contributors. On the flip side of the coin, money also keeps people out of the race. A high proportion of truly brilliant people are successful in the private sector. Why should I give up my simple office job raking it $120,000 a year to become the president, get my brains beat in on national television for every "wrong" (a subjective term) move I make and make only slightly more money? Or if $120k is low, maybe even less money than I could otherwise. And as I intimated, one thing we SURELY are doing as a society are accepting the political smears. I'm not only talking about the "attack ads" run around elections, but the entire atmosphere on Capital Hill. Think about it. Congress is little more than two charged, polar opposite masses of people. Sometimes one side or another has so many more members that they can steam-roll their agendas through; sometimes it is so even that there must be compromise. But it's disgusting to see how often votes go straight down party lines. I would like to believe there are some free-thinkers in Congress but they don't seem to show themselves. And any time one party gets its way over the objection of the other, there will be harsh comments back and forth for further political gain. Why get in the middle of that? Can independents win? I believe there are five independents currently in the whole of Congress. One senator, who was a Republican but switch parties after he was re-elected: Could he have won reelection as an independent? That leaves four members of the House who I assume were all elected as independents. Four out of 400+ is still a heck of a minority. And yeah, there are a handful of independent governors and state legislatures around. I hope they are part of a trend and not simply an exception, but I don't suppose I'm holding my breath about it. All of these things keep civic-minded people away from politics in one form or another. Frankly, in my estimation, the people who would make the best politicans are the ones who lay aside their political affiliations and simply think and act and vote out of pure logical deduction. Sure, it will still produce disagreements, but at least we can be sure that a vote is truly what a candidate believes in and not simply what his party told him to vote. Can we say that is true today?
      • I agree that money has a lot to do with it. It's disgusting that it requires millions of dollars to win any major election. Anybody who even has a chance to seriously run in such an election is already bought and paid for.

        I also think a major problem is that people are more interested in voting for the winning side than voting for someone that will do a good job. Essentially that means almost everyone elected is from one of the two main parties and they were elected less because of what they'll do than bec

    • Re:Where are they now? (Score:2, Insightful)

      by sllim ( 95682 )
      My most sincere apologies if this gets even a little political. I am going to attempt to walk a very fine line of talking about where the visionaries are today, why they are not in politics and compare them to politicians.
      I am attempting to make a point that isn't really politicaly biased, but I will talk about subjects I know about. Please try to look beyond my conservative slant for the points I am going to try to make.

      You asked a really good question. Why is it that the only people that run for high

      • "...[Rush Limbaugh's] serious answer [as to why he would never run for the presidency] does cut to the heart of it. The job is entirely too demanding and it would require a compromise of his beliefs. Look how the conservatives treated Clinton, look how the liberals are treating Bush. It is a wonder that either one of those men got anything accomplished at all. It seems a rare day when someone isn't gunning for them"

        Translation: Rush likes dishing it out, but isn't too sure he'd enjoy having to take it.

      • Re:Where are they now? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Corgha ( 60478 ) on Saturday October 04, 2003 @06:46AM (#7131546)
        What if Arnold knows exactly what his weaknesses is? What if Arnold surrounds himself with smart advisors that he agrees with and listens too?

        [Sorry this is long, but it's late and I'm too tired to edit.]

        People always bring up this "smart advisor" theory when discussing not-so-bright candidates, but I'm not sure I buy it.

        Here's the flaw I see in it: incompetent people have been shown [apa.org] to be less capable not only of judging their own performance, but also of judging the performance of others.

        You see this all the time when it comes to technical advisement. Some non-technical manager will think some consultant "really knows his stuff" when that consultant is really just spouting buzzwords or telling the manager what he wants to hear, and the consultant actually performs like a train wreck.

        How is the incompetent candidate supposed to be able to judge who is competent among his potential advisors?

        Maybe surrounding yourself with advisors that you agree with is not the best sign. And maybe you have to have a certain foundation of competence and be both willing and able to do the sort of critical thinking and analysis that distinguishes the truly competent advisors from the advisors that are just buttering you up.

        Another interesting thing about the study linked above is that while the best performers tend to accurately judge how well they did in an absolute sense, they tend humbly to underestimate their own performance relative to everyone else.

        Perhaps that is because part of becoming competent is learning from your mistakes and pushing against your limits, which probably imparts a healthy sense of your own failings. In fact, some of the most impressively competent people I have met were, while confident, at the same time oddly humble -- perhaps because, while it seemed to me that they could do just about anything, they were more keenly aware of the vast depths of their field that they had yet to plumb.

        At the same time, lots of the less-guruish but merely competent technical folks I see complaining bombastically on IRC or /. and acting condescending to users turn out not to be so hot after all when it comes down to it.

        Of course, the problem is that the blowhards are a lot more fun to listen to than the real gurus. Where's the fun in someone saying "emacs and vi are equally viable alternatives, and here are the cases in which each is best used"? We like people who make bold statements and who "stick to their ideals", even if it's only because they're too arrogant to consider that they might be wrong. We laugh today at "640k should be enough for anybody," but no one remembers what the other guy said.

        If there were more geeks, and there such a thing as nationally-syndicated geek talk radio, those guys who hang out, start editor/distribution wars, and flame the newbies would probably get pretty high ratings, and people would probably call in and agree with them and take their turn to flame the newbies.

        They'd be pretty popular, but they wouldn't necessarily be more competent. (Take /. for instance ;)

        Maybe the problem isn't the spotlight or the low pay. Maybe the problem is that the world is really complicated, but we are attracted to people who see things in black-and-white. Maybe nobody wants to listen to the people who really understand things, because it's too complicated and they don't have the time. We like quick, pithy sound bites, even if they're totally off-base. Arnold is not popular because he has a firm grasp of the issues or because he's a loyal representative of his party, but because he's got some quick one-liners, and he's famous. We don't even care if some of the one-liners contradict the other ones, as long as they are funny.

        When you look at it that way, coming back to the topic at hand, I can't imagine anything that would prepare you worse

        • Re:Where are they now? (Score:4, Insightful)

          by crawling_chaos ( 23007 ) on Saturday October 04, 2003 @08:54AM (#7131814) Homepage
          Here's the flaw I see in it: incompetent people have been shown [apa.org] to be less capable not only of judging their own performance, but also of judging the performance of others.

          In my mind, this finding doesn't just invalidate the "comptetent advisors" theory, it also neatly answers the original poster's question as well. In a universal sufferage system, the incompetent are allowed to vote and they far outnumber the competent people and end up choosing a weaker candidate.

          The problem of course, is extending the sufferage only to the competent. There's no good test to find these individuals, so we're sort of stuck with what we have. As Churchill once remarked: "Democracy is the worst form of government known to man, with the exception of all of the others."

          • There's no good test to find these individuals

            Just asking people to name the major canidates and the referendums on the ballot for would make a big difference. People should at least have given some thought to voting before actually arriving at the polls. With some thought, I think a test could be made without discriminating against anyone unfairly or compromising the anonymity of voting.

    • you suffer from historical myopia.

      reinterpretations and the human tendency to vilify/ deify others warps perceptions of time and places past

      people always long for something long ago, forgetting how it was just as sucky as it is now at least

      example? some of us might go "damn to be a teenager again, what glorious years of my life"

      truth? your teenage years were some of your most awkward, painful times in existence

      this is true for everyone

      true of human nature

      when you look at the founding fathers, you tur
      • I'm not making them out to be demi-gods. I'm ml aeenting that they had some actual qualities (intellect, culture, nobility) that is sorely missing in the political world today. I don't doubt that we've come a long way in certain aspects of our political leaders, but we have regressed on many other fronts.

        When it comes down to it, you have to consider these great leaders in the context of their times. Did many of the founding fathers own slaves? Yes. But so did most other wealthy people in the time. In this
    • There : http://www.stallman.org/rms.jpg
    • The most important skill a politican needs today is being a good fundraiser.

      We've got a president who is, at best, of averge intelligence, and whose greatest strength is something as plebian as business.

      And besides his family history, that makes him very well suited to getting elected President. His training has been in raising money for oil exploration companies for twenty years. He's a great fund raiser.

      Are they staying out of public service just because they're so damn disgusted by the whole syst
    • Are we as a society doing something that are actively keeping these people out?
      Most Americans aren't doing anything to get them in, i.e., vote.

  • Why (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Timesprout ( 579035 ) on Saturday October 04, 2003 @03:13AM (#7131094)
    Why should there be an American prototype of a civic scientist. Surely many of the Greek thinkers, (Aristotle and Plato in particular) paved the way for this sort of thinking. Franklin was undoubtly a brilliant man but I would hardly call him a prototype.

    Its an interesting article though I would consider it somewhat naive. The majority of people dont care about science. Once the inventions and breakthroughs keep coming and their lives are made easier, safer etc. they will just say isn't science wonderful and carry on with their daily lives.

    As for the political aspects I think (conspiracy theory here) that the political and legal systems are deliberately being made as obtuse as possible to prevent access by the public. Supposedly we get transparent government which basically means they might hold the odd, ultimately meaningless inquiry every now and then. Witness the current WMD fiasco for a classic example of political spin, distortion of facts and politicians doing as they please. The legal system in particular has been made ridiculously complex to the detriment of justice and the embellishment of lawyers.

    It would be good if we could get more scientists, or engineers for that matter into political positions. They would bring a more balanced and rational perspective to many of the issues facing society today. Unfortunately politics is the art of compromise and we are all well aware what happens when we start to compromise on engineering and scientific projects (recent shuttle furore anyone). Scientists and Engineers are no more immune from this than politicians.

    Again I think its an interesting article but naive to think that a visionary scientist, or even a bunch of scientists would somehow radically change our political and social landscape. Our current systems are a little bit too entrenched.
    • Why should there be an American prototype of a civic scientist. Surely many of the Greek thinkers, (Aristotle and Plato in particular) paved the way for this sort of thinking. Franklin was undoubtly a brilliant man but I would hardly call him a prototype.

      Yes, but Franklin has three advantages over the ancient Greeks:

      1) He is documented. We know what he did, when he did it. The Greeks' few known activities are all hearsay.
      2) He is modern. He has dealt with governments and countries like our governments an
  • I would love to be living in a society that was led by our greatest artisons and scientists such as Franklin, such a society would bring peace and fulfillment just by being in the environment created by it. Look at how the people in power influence us now, The front page of the newspapper never shows good news, prime-time news stories are never about a fireman saving a cat from a tree or anything else good and heart warming. We are born and raised into depressive and supressive thinking, if we try to think

  • Question (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Newcastle22 ( 621052 )
    Where are the modern civic scientists? How come they are not important government officials any more?
  • And of course Karl Marx was the ultimate civic scientist.

    On a more practical level i quess that Josif Stalin was the ultimate civic engineer. He used to even get into tractor production and make little changes to the blueprints. The ultimate bureaucrat. Although i couldn't really call him a scientist, just an engineer/bureaucrat.

    I think that we could forget about Marx now, what we really need is a new John Maynard Keynes. If socialism doesn't work, well, corporate welfare and unregulated markets suck too.
  • The first modern example that comes to mind is the team at Google [google.com] in that they have done basic research and applied that result for the common good on a mass scale.

  • And for today... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by mcrbids ( 148650 ) on Saturday October 04, 2003 @03:47AM (#7131181) Journal
    Perhaps one of the most likely modern-day candidates might be Linus Torvalds....

    He's helped create a marvel of technology and engineering, entirely for the public benefit...

    The great people of yesteryear still exist today... they just aren't in public office.

    Remember that Ben F was a rebel - the "powers that be" at the time was the British govt.
    • But good old Linus doesn't seem to interested in Civics. His thing is the Kernal. Nothing wrong with that. He'll get hisa statues, too. But he's purposefully avoided the spotlight, avoided getting into the social ramifications. He leaves that for others.
    • You might want to consider Stallman in that thought as well. He is very much a leader and an innovator. Although I don't much care for him personally, the GPL has done some marvelous things.

      The issue is that politics in this country is too political to allow for innovation. That is, it is completely centered around compromise, while innovation is centered around progress, and the two are quite commnly conflicting ideas.
    • He's helped create a marvel of technology and engineering, entirely for the public benefit.

      That is quite spin heavy and revisionist, ironic given the original topic.

      Linux is no marvel of technology, it is a marvel of social interaction. Linux is yet another re-implementation of Unix made by folks studying previous implementations. That said it is likely to become the dominant Unix environment[1] not for technical or engineering reasons but for social reasons. The only revolutionary thing about Linux

  • Not Ironic (Score:2, Informative)

    by Marlor ( 643698 )
    Ironically the same issue has an example of a modern day civic scientist, a profile of Richard Meserve, a physicist who became a lawyer.

    I don't think this is irony (or even a coincidence), I think it was planned, magazines generally have two or three themes for each issue, and this one had the theme of "civic scientists".

    And no, it's not ironic that the poster used the word "ironically" incorrectly either.
  • The almanac is the legacy of Franklin and it was nothing but a collection of sayings directed towards simple-minded, conservative, church going farmers that were often misleading and which he himself did not follow by any means.
    The one that particularly pisses me off is "Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, welathy and wise."
    It is a fact that this is completely contrary to the sleep requirements of human beings. Here was can see a good example of where Franklin was not a scientist at all,

    • This seems to be flamebait. The almanac was not his scientific legacy and wasn't even written with any pretence of contributing to science. Judging Franklin as a scientist on the basis of the almanac is like judging Newton on the basis of his theological writings.

      The scientific legacy of Franklin was the "single fluid" theory of electricity. He was the first to hypothesize that electricity was a single conserved "fluid" instead of two fluids (corresponding to + and -). In fact, it was this hypothesis

  • Have you ever noticed that people who write about "science" in the abstract never seem to have a clue about what science is? Read this piece of humanities trash. Nothing about observation, theory or methodology. Lots about politics and education.

    It almost comes off as a political mad-lib where the key words included "science" and "franklin" and "civic".

  • A physicist that became a lawyer

    How proud his mother must be. Her son is the lowest form of life on earth.


    • Are you saying that Eben Moglen [columbia.edu], who defends the GPL [columbia.edu], is the lowest form of life?

      I suppose all people involved with computers are also no better than the worst of them [toyokeizai.co.jp].

      Anyway, if you must make a dig at lawyers - be funny. For example, "why do lawyers wear neckties ... it keeps the foreskin from crawling up their necks."

      Simply saying all lawyers are evil is neither amusing, nor inciteful. It just makes you look bitter.

      "What's the difference between a porquipine and two lawyers in Porsche?" ...

      • What the fuck? Are you dumb (that's a rethorical question, you clearly are)?

        The point is that a physicist is someone who tries to (at least should have as a goal) unravel the deepest mysteries known to man, whereas a lawyer is just a fucking tool. A fucking flesh container who have memorized some fucking arcane texts, nothing else (oh, the successful lawyers lie more than the rest). If you convert from physicist to lawyer, then you're a despicable entity. Period.

  • I think that the late Carl Sagan should be a more exemplary choice of a "Civic Scientist".
    For those among the slashdot readership who are not wholly familiar with Dr. Sagan's
    TV series (Cosmos); it's worth buying on DVD cold.
    He's written a great many books for the layperson. The last of which, Billions and Billions, approach
    subjects such as religion, politics, environmental concerns, family planning, etc.
    He was a member of NORML [norml.org], frequently spoke out against nuclear weapons production,
    and was a d

    • Sorry, I meant to say MODERN civic scientist.
      I was by NO MEANS suggesting that Dr. Sagan was more exemplary as a "civic scientist" vis a vis Ben Franklin.

      not by any stretch of the imagination...

      -jcw
    • As someone who has watched the series, it is very interesting, but skip the last episode; unless you want to be treated to a long winded rant about the cold war. Other than that the science is pretty amazing for a general audience. Although for the love of god, close your eyes before you see that hokey spaceship of his. I could not stop laughing!
  • ... fear was not a factor for Ben ;)
    Out of interest, the venerable man himself premiered on New Zealand television tonight, in the 100th episode of Southpark... coincidence?
  • I wonder, does Richard Meserve also have a lifetime guest-pass/membership at the Hellfire Club? [vermilion-sands.com] (Run by Franklin's friend Sir Francis Dashwood.) There was a lot more to Franklin than the sanitized popular "civic" version of history. (But isn't there always?)
  • "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."

    It's almost scary how appropriate that quote is today...
    • "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."

      It's almost scary how appropriate that quote is today

      Study more real history and less web hysteria, that quote has been frighteningly appropriate for nearly every decade since the country began. Many political groups, ranging from the ACLU to the NRA, have been singing that song decades before there was a web to post DMCA violations to.

  • Ben.. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by lanalyst ( 221985 ) on Saturday October 04, 2003 @09:40AM (#7131968)
    I work in Philadelphia.. in the historial area. Reminders and memorials of Franklin are everywhere. Sometime ago, I found myself interested in this man who seemed facinated and involved with seemingly every aspect of his time. He always had an opinion and as the article pointed out, was willing to change his mind. He was truly beloved by his contemporaries - when he died in 1790, his funeral [ushistory.org] was a testament to the regard he was held - in all diciplines of his day.

    Of course we can focus on a single aspect of his interests and be impressed (they are after all of his time), but things like he was a prolific, practical inventor but never sought a patent.. he argued (unsucessfully) for an anti-slavery clause to the constitution.. he was a nerd with great social skills.. he was first and foremost a printer and communicator; I'm sure he would be quite pleased with OSS and the internet.

    In the political/civic arena, his wisdom and participation was sought after. Yes, everyone loves to quote "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." but his contribution to the design of the great seal of the US [greatseal.com]included the motto "Rebellion to Tyrants is Obedience to God." Go figure. His son was Governor of New Jersey and a loyalist to King George.

    The liberty bell is being moved [gophila.com] on Oct 9th!
  • It amuses me that a Clinton aid picks an alcoholic womanizer as a model citizen scientist.

    • As the present administration demonstrates, we need more alcoholic womanizers in office - hell, I can respect a womanizer. It's coke heads who fail to womanize who are dangerous to America.

      Bush needs an intern ... BAD.
  • Does that mean this is the guy responsible for spending billions of dollars to find out that power lines don't cause cancer?

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