In tribute I credit him with developing 3 major branches of science and contributing to 3 other fields, usually not considered to be sciences.
1) Oceanography. He plotted the Gulf Stream by sampling water temperatures along the trans-Atlantic routes.
2) Electricity. His kite experiment demonstrated that lightning was the same phenomenon as static electrity, but on a larger scale.
3) Quality control. Franklin's primary source of income through his later years was a business that re-cast lead characters used by newspapers and printers. He often quoted a version of this maxim:
For want of a nail the shoe was lost.For want of a shoe the horse was lost.For want of a horse the rider was lost.For want of a rider the battle was lost.For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.
4) Government structure. Franklin may have penned the phrase "we hold these truths to be self-evident" in emulation of Euclid's Elements which built geometry on postulates, an earlier form of self-evident truths.
5) Philosophy. In Franklin's day, philosophy embraced all knowledge, from math to astronomy, from government to physics.
6) Diplomacy. Who but Franklin could have persuaded France to finance and support the American Revolution? As with everything, Franklin handled diplomacy as a form of science.
- CarlD
January 13, 2008
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