Gentlemen Scientists and Revolutionaries: The Founding Fathers in the Age of Enlightenment

Science and experimentation were at the heart of the Founding Fathers philosophies and actions. The Founders relentlessly tinkered, invented, farmed by means of scientific principles, star-gazed, were fascinated by math, used scientific analogies and scientific thinking in their political writing, and fell in love with technologies. They conceived of the United States of America as a grand experiment in the scientific meaning of the word. George Washingtons embrace of an experimental vaccination for smallpox saved the American army in 1777. He was also considered the most scientific farmer in the country. John Adams founded a scientific society and wrote public support of science into the Massachusetts constitution. The president of another scientific society, Thomas Jefferson, convinced its leading lights to train Meriwether Lewis for the Lewis and Clark expedition his Declaration of Independence was so suffused with scientific thinking that it was called Newtonian.