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EXCERPT
For most of human history we knew very little, and what we did know was known by very few. Thomas Young (1773-1829), an English scientist, researcher, physician, and polymath is usually cited as “the last person to know everything,” by which is usually meant the then-contemporary academy of Western scholarship.1 He was popularly known as “Phenomenon Young,” spoke a daunting number of languages, and made contributions to many fields of science, including translating the Rosetta stone and coining the term “energy.” Einstein praised him for his work on Newton and his physics in his 1931 foreword to an edition of Newton’s Optics. For most of modern history, people took pride in being knowledgeable, and the deep drive of Western cultures, particularly in America, was to expand knowledge and make it more widely known.
Benjamin Franklin, who more than any other founder set in motion the processes that have become the American culture, had a very particular kind of culture in mind, and open-minded education was a major part of it. His America was solidly middle class. It encouraged upward mobility and did not permit hereditary privilege. It absolutely separated church and state, yet was tolerant of individual religious beliefs, or with equal equanimity, the complete absence thereof.
Publication History: Explore: The Journal of Science and Healing
July 2008 (Vol. 4, Issue 4, Pages 232-234)
