The John Winthrops and Developing Scientific Thought in New England
[In this essay, Benton argues how the lives and practices of Winthrop and two of his descendents influenced the evolution of scientific thought in America, beginning with Winthrop's meticulous documentation of natural phenomena.]
Plantations in their beginnings have work ynough, & find difficulties sufficient to settle a comfortable way of subsistence, there beinge buildings, fencings, cleeringe and breakinge up of ground, lands to be attended, orchards to be planted, highways & bridges & fortifications to be made, & all thinges to doe, as in the beginninge of the world. Its not to be wondered if there have not yet beene itinera subterranea. …
John Winthrop, Jr., to Sir Robert Moray1
A study of science or scientific thought should never be conducted along national lines as if there were something called French, German or American science. Scientific problems are international. As Professor George Sarton reminds us, “There is no American science, but there are American scientists, a good many of them, and some of them as great as may be met anywhere else in the world. The best way to explain American achievements is to focus the reader's attention upon a few of the leading scientists.”2 No better view can be obtained of the development of scientific thought in America than through a study of three John Winthrops.
The first New England John Winthrop (1587-1649) was the governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. His son, John Winthrop, Jr. (1605-76) was the first governor of Connecticut. A later John Winthrop (1714-79), a great-grandnephew of John Winthrop, Jr., was a distinguished professor of mathematics and natural philosophy at Harvard. There were other John Winthrops as well, but in these three one can see a development in scientific thinking which enabled it to escape the religious dominance which had impeded it.
Governor John Winthrop of Massachusetts had grown up in a home characterized by intellectual opportunity, religious devotion, and superstition. His father, Adam, kept a diary in which he recorded natural phenomena. One of his earliest notations is his reference to the earthquake of 1580: “the 6 of April 1580 ther was a yearthe quacke” (Winthrop Papers, Vol. I, 41). In the same volume he makes several observations: in the year 1600 on “The xvth of Aug. fell a great Rayne which made a floud at Boxford” (68) and on “The 23 of Decembre I felt an Erthquake” (75). An editorial footnote at this point in the Papers states that the quake occasioned the usual warning in a December 31, 1601, publication called “The Tremblinge of the Earth, and the warninges of the world before the Judgement Daye.” Destructive natural phenomena were believed to be the result of God's displeasure.
In a reference to one of his tenants, Adam shows typical superstition: “Memorandum that John Raven the same day that he fell sicke went into his yarde and saw a wrenne strike down a Robin redbrest starke dedde which he tooke vp and shewed his wife thereof presently” (42). Adam Winthrop, an observer and recorder, was not a questioner, a characteristic he passed on to his son. The first New England John Winthrop did, however, believe in the validity of experience. Winthrop demonstrates this belief in a series of journal entries called “Experiencia” and is quite specific in a January 20, 1616, passage which reads like a prayer:
Thou assurest my heart that I am in a right course, even the narrowe waye that leads to heaven: Thou tellest me, and all experience tells me, that in this way there is least companie, and that those which doe walke openly in this way shalbe despised, pointed at, hated of the world, made a byworde, reviled, slandered, rebuked, made a gazinge stocke, called puritans, nice fooles, hipocrites, hairbrainde fellows, rashe, indiscreet, vain-glorious, and all that naught is. …
(Papers, I, 196)
This foreshadows the later course of Winthrop's life when he would be a leader of those “called puritans” and would continue to rely on what he heard God and experience tell him.
The selection of John Winthrop as the first governor of Massachusetts brought prominence to a man who in many respects was like William Bradford, governor of the Plymouth Colony. In his record of the early Plymouth years, Bradford's primary interest is to show God's providence. Winthrop shares this concern, as noted in a 1620 passage from his “Experiencia”:
Many thinges which fall out by the ordinarye course of nature etc, are not easylye discerned to be guided by any speciall providence of God, as the Eclipses of the Sunne etc, thunders, tempests, etc, the effects whereof are ofte very strange; but God who had from the beginninge determined of suche effects, did withall appointe that the course of naturall causes should concurre at the same tyme: so that heerby his glory is the greater, in effectinge things extraordinary, and yet not changing the order of causes.
(Papers, I, 238)
Natural phenomena are first shown to be guided by a special providence of God and, although strange, are seen to have predetermined effects. The eclipses, storms, and tempests are precisely those items which Winthrop records in his various journal entries. He is quite conscious of his observations, but his scientific interest seems to stop with the recording. Since theological dogma placed all occurrences, no matter how unusual, under the special providence of God, one could only observe, record, and marvel.
John Winthrop's recording of natural phenomena seems to be used primarily in making comparisons with England. A typical example is contained in a July 23, 1630, letter to his son John:
For the Country it selfe I can discerne little difference betweene it and our owne. we have had only 2 daies which I have observed more hot then in England here is as good land as I have seene there but none so bad as there Here is sweet aire faire rivers and plenty of springes and the water better then in Eng(land) here can be noe want of any thinge to those who bring meane(s) to raise out of the earth and sea.
(Papers, II, 302)
After John Winthrop, Jr., had settled in New England and then returned to London on business, his father wrote him in December, 1634, saying, “I wish that in your return you would observe the winde and weather everye daye, that we may see how it agrees with our parts” (Papers, III, 177). The passage shows not only that John Winthrop was interested in comparative weather statistics but also that he was training his son to observe and record such phenomena as well.
A further example of John Winthrop's careful observation of the weather, the flora, and the fauna of New England is given in his September, 1644, letter to the Earl of Warwick (Papers, IV, 491-93). The letter is too long to quote here, but Winthrop's description of New England, including a short review of the government of the colony, is strikingly similar to the later work by Crèvecoeur in his Letters From An American Farmer. The major impression one receives is that of Winthrop's keen eye.
Although he was preoccupied with politics and religion, the range of John Winthrop's interests can be seen in his journal. In the first volume he notes the discovery in 1636 of whale bones sixty miles up the James River, a June, 1638, earthquake, a “tempest or hiracano” in August of the same year, and an appearance of a strange light the following March.3 Winthrop actually observed only the earthquake and the storm. While he often merely records events, his theological belief that all acts of nature are directly controlled by God is never hidden. For instance, he insists that a two-month drought in 1639 was ended as a direct result of a day of humiliation appointed by the court. “The very day after the fast was appointed there fell a good shower, and, within one week after the day of humiliation was past, we had such a store of rain, and so seasonably, as the corn revived and gave hope of a very plentiful harvest” (Journal, I, 307).
Unfortunately, Winthrop also believed that an unnatural birth was a sign of God's displeasure. In the first volume of his journals he reports one such birth by the wife of William Dyer who was “notoriously infected with Mrs. Hutchinson's errors” (266) and another by Anne Hutchinson herself which Winthrop believes demonstrates “her error in denying inherent righteousness” (277). Of much greater scientific interest is Winthrop's recording of the first ascent of the White Mountains by a European, Darby Field, which he accompanies with a transcription of Field's observations (Journal, II, 62-63, 85-86).
John Winthrop's papers show him to be a man with scientific interests who records his own observations and others' reports. He is not fully a part of the growing scientific movement of the seventeenth century, for he does not seem interested in testing or experimentation. Perhaps John Winthrop's most important scientific contribution was his instilling in his son the habit of observation and recording. There can be no doubt that John Winthrop, Jr., made the most significant scientific contributions of any New England colonist of the seventeenth century.
The second New England John Winthrop was a man of more diversified interests than his father. He has been characterized most significantly as one who “was ahead of his period in that his varied interests were scientific rather than theological.”4 Richard S. Dunn is even more specific:
Religion framed his life, but he did not experience his father's crusading zeal. He was energetic and public spirited, but preferred science to politics. Whereas the elder Winthrop wrote didactic tracts and diaries of religious meditations, the son kept medical and alchemical notebooks. One finds fugitive opinions of all sorts, but no systematic religious or political philosophy. … John Winthrop, Jr., was all things to all men, a highly receptive person, open to new ideas, adaptable to new situations.5
Such an obvious change in orientation between two successive generations is a sign of cultural change in progress.
The first indication of the scientific interest of John Winthrop, Jr., is found in his letter to his father of January, 1630. The elder John Winthrop was in London making final plans for his trip to New England which would begin two months later. His son had remained at home to negotiate the sale of his father's property and to clear up other matters of business, and in his letter he describes a new variety of windmill he had invented:
I have now made a rude modell (as only to shew, that it is feasable) of that wind motion, which I tould you of, then only imagining it speculatively but now have seene the experience of it, and doe affirme that an Instrument may be made to move with the wind horizontally to equall if not to exeed the ordinary verticall motion of the windmill sailes. … I conceive it may be aplied to many laborious vses as any kind of milles Corne milles saw miles etc. … And one spetiall property wilbe in them that they allwaies stand right for the wind whersoever it bloweth: If there may be made any vse of it, I desire New England should reape the benifit for whose sake it was invented.
(Papers, II, 193-94)
In addition to this being the first record of John Winthrop, Jr.'s scientific activity, it shows the practical nature of his mind and one of his many schemes to enhance the productivity of the New England colonists. A special characteristic of the passage is that rather than merely to speculate or simply record phenomena, as his father might do, John Winthrop, Jr., first imagined a particular design and then experimented to verify his hypothesis. He then reports the results of his findings. At twenty-four, John Winthrop, Jr., is a practitioner of the new science.
The second John Winthrop was much more than a New England colonist involved in the new science, however. His early travels had brought him in contact with many of the leading minds of Europe. It is logical that when a scientific society was organized to promote natural philosophy John Winthrop, Jr., was included. Proposed for membership in the newly formed Royal Society and officially elected on January 1, 1662, John Winthrop, Jr., the following year, was elected an Original Fellow of the Society under the Second Charter. Sir Henry Lyons notes in addition that the secretary of the Society was instructed in 1664 to “inform John Winthrop that he was invited in a particular manner to take upon him the charge of being the Chief Correspondent of the Royal Society in the West, as Sir Philberto Vernatti was in the East Indies.”6
The first American colonial member of the Royal Society was willing to become the Society's western correspondent. The records of Winthrop's communications to the Society and the specimens sent reveal a quite active scientific career for one who was also a colonial governor and was almost continually involved in plans for colonial industries. R. P. Stearns notes that Winthrop's first formal presentation to the Society, the first paper given by any colonial, was presented in 1662 and titled “A Description of ye Artifice and making of Tarr and Pitch in New England, and ye Materialle of wch it is made.”7 A more widely known paper, “Of Maiz,” was given by Winthrop on the last day of that year. Stearns calls this second work “undoubtedly the most complete description of Indian corn, its cultivation, and its uses that the English public had seen” (p. 128).
Throughout the years Winthrop wrote his numerous acquaintances in the Society and sent boxes of specimens. Although some of his communications were lost at sea, he shipped many items of note and the Society begged for more. One of the “Curiosities of Nature” Winthrop sent was apparently an unusual species of starfish. The fish provoked wide discussion and was shown to King Charles II. The Society wrote Winthrop immediately: “Wee wish very much, that you could procure a particular description of the said fish viz: whether it be common there, what is observable in it when alive; what colour it hath then; what kind of motion in water; what use it maketh of all that curious workmanship wch nature had adorned it with? &c.” (Quoted by Stearns, p. 135). Obviously, Winthrop had submitted a rarity, and the Society wanted more information. One can also note how the Society instructed Winthrop in the scientific method of proceeding with a study of a particular marine organism. Almost eight years passed before Winthrop replied, noting, “I asked all the questions I could thinke needful concerning it” (Stearns, p. 138).
No simple listing of John Winthrop, Jr.'s scientific accomplishments could sufficiently assess his contribution. He was an avid astronomer and reported an individual sighting of Jupiter's fifth satellite. Although his telescope was not powerful enough for such a sighting, a fifth satellite was confirmed more than 200 years later. In New England, Winthrop was known as a doctor and chemist. He was a self-trained physician whose medical practice was extensive. He made no reported contribution to medical science, but he did rely heavily on a red powder he compounded of miter and antimony and called rubila.
The second John Winthrop maintained a wide scientific correspondence. In his history of the Royal Society, Sir Henry Lyons reports that of the eighty persons with whom John Winthrop, Jr., corresponded in England and Europe, thirty either were or had been Fellows of the Royal Society. In 1641, Robert Child wrote that he was having difficulty securing the books Winthrop had requested and that he was sending him a list of his own chemical books (Papers, IV, 333-38). In 1648 Child sent Winthrop a report of how “they make Rozin and Turpentin in France out of those trees which you call pitch pine by a facile way” (Papers, V, 221). This is obviously an early interest in what was, some fourteen years later, to become Winthrop's first paper before the Royal Society. In the letter Child mentions books and inventions which he feels will interest Winthrop; he also writes, “Sir I desire you if you meet with any sorts of seeds or stones, which are not common to make me partakers of some of them, and I shall willingly doe you service in this or any other way” (Papers, V, 222).
Another of Winthrop's correspondents was Augustinus Petraeus, a Dutch chemist who with others had formed an early scientific society. Petraeus wrote to Winthrop in Dutch, but Paul Marquart Schlegel, a Hamburg physician and anatomist, wrote in Latin, as did Johannes Tanckmarus. Schlegel founded an academy for the training of young physicians and became famous for his lectures in anatomy. Tanckmarus, a doctor of medicine who had been associated with mystics and heretics and probably met John Winthrop in Hamburg, wrote Winthrop on several occasions. John Winthrop's willingness to maintain contact with men of such varied beliefs suggests that theological orthodoxy was less important in his life than in that of his father.
In addition to his governmental tasks, his medical practice, and his ample correspondence, Winthrop was something of an explorer. In 1644 he petitioned the Massachusetts General Court for the right to search for iron mines “in all places within this Jurisdiction, and the same being found, to digg and cary away and dispose thereof for the best advantage” (Papers, IV, 423). He also purchased from Webuckshan and Washcomo black lead (graphite) mines (Papers, V, 4). By the Fall of 1645, Winthrop was traveling throughout Massachusetts and Connecticut in search of productive areas for a settlement. He kept a journal during the trip, three-fourths of which he wrote in Latin. Unfortunately, the most interesting comments are the emendations and speculations of the translator.8 The following Winthrop comments, among the most expansive in the journal, are less revealing than one might expect from a Fellow of the Royal Society: “… I crossed the river and the stream Poquanuc, where Robin told me there was fruit-bearing land without rocks, arable with a goodly number of planting-fields.”9 Because of his varied interests and responsibilities, John Winthrop, Jr., does occasionally lapse from his scientific dedication.
By following the scientific career of John Winthrop, Jr., one can see a decided change in emphasis from that of his father. Although raised in a zealously religious household, the second John Winthrop was motivated by science and adventure, not theology and Puritan dogmatism. He maintained numerous contacts with non-Puritans, and from an early age he practiced testing an hypothesis by means of experimentation. In John Winthrop, Jr., one can see the beginning of the evolution of scientific thought in New England. Without rejecting the religion of his father, the second John Winthrop moved away from the darkness of Puritan restrictions into the light of free scientific inquiry.
Although John Winthrop, Jr., gave his sons scientific training, they failed to make significant scientific contributions. However, a later John Winthrop, the son of Chief Justice Adam Winthrop of Massachusetts Bay and the great-grandnephew of John Winthrop, Jr., achieved distinction in science which surpassed that of any in his illustrious family. Elected second Hollis professor of mathematics and natural philosophy at Harvard in 1738 when he was only twenty-four, Professor John Winthrop is credited with establishing at that college the first institutional laboratory of experimental physics, introducing to the mathematical curriculum differential and integral calculus, and teaching the new science and its methods to four decades of Harvard students. The first colonial to record observations of sunspots and a member of the Royal Society as well as the American Philosophical Society, Professor Winthrop was the primary supporter of the theories and conclusions of Benjamin Franklin regarding electricity. Most significantly, Professor John Winthrop represents a culmination of that development in scientific thinking which had begun with the second John Winthrop. The Dictionary of American Biography records that “When he was examined for the professorship by the Overseers of the College the question of his theological adherence was not raised for fear it would prove too broad for Harvard at that time” (XX, 415).
One of the best views of that development in thought which Professor John Winthrop exemplifies is in his reaction to that natural phenomenon which had so interested the first John Winthrop—the earthquake. Governor Winthrop of Massachusetts believed that earthquakes were signs of God's displeasure with his people. Many still held to this belief in the middle of the eighteenth century. A devastating earthquake destroyed Lisbon, Portugal, in 1755, and a later earthquake terrified many persons in New England. Professor Winthrop taught that earthquakes resulted from purely physical causes, and he denied the contentions of those who sought to explain the quake as a direct intervention of the “Finger of God” in earthly affairs.
At the time of a New England earthquake in 1727, the Reverend Mr. Thomas Prince had published a sermon titled “Earthquakes the Works of God and Tokens of his just Displeasure.” The new concern over quakes caused the aging minister to reprint the earlier sermon with an appendix to suggest that a secondary cause of earthquakes might be electrical in nature, possibly a consequence of the installation of numerous lightning rods in New England. Professor Winthrop quickly published his own Lecture on Earthquakes for which he prepared a special appendix specifically denying Mr. Prince's contentions. Prince sent a letter of protest to the Boston Gazette, and Winthrop firmly maintained his original stand. He was content neither to attribute the quake solely to God's agency nor simply to describe it as John Jr. would have done, but instead relocated the phenomenon from the religious to the scientific realm of rationalization.
Professor Winthrop survived the confrontation. He received the first honorary Doctor of Laws conferred by Harvard, and his interest and influence contributed to the founding of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in Boston. Moreover, he reveals fully that development in scientific thinking which had begun years earlier. Professor Winthrop was no longer willing, as had been Governor Winthrop of Massachusetts, to subordinate nature to divine power. Rather he wished to elevate natural phenomena to scientific status, liberating nature on the one hand and the potentialities of her observers on the other. Like the second John Winthrop, Professor Winthrop accepted an hypothesis only after it had been sufficiently tested through experimentation. By the end of the eighteenth century, and largely due to the work of Professor John Winthrop, a new age in scientific thought had arrived, an age characterized by its feeling of having freed itself from the restrictions of dogmatic Calvinism.
Notes
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Letter of November 12, 1668, in Massachusetts Historical Society Proceedings, 16 (1868), 236-37.
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In the foreword to Bernard Jaffee, Men of Science in America (New York, 1944), p. xiii.
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Winthrop, Journal, ed. James K. Hosmer (New York, 1908), I, 186, 270, 272, 294.
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James Truslow Adams, sv. “Winthrop, John, Jr.,” Dictionary of American Biography, XX, 413.
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Dunn, Puritans and Yankees: The Winthrop Dynasty of New England, 1630-1717 (Princeton, 1962), p. 59.
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Lyons, The Royal Society: 1660-1940 (New York, 1968), p. 28.
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Stearns, Science in the British Colonies of America (Urbana, 1970), p. 128. Stearns provides a full survey of Winthrop's scientific activities on pp. 120-39.
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See W. R. Carlton, “Overland to Connecticut in 1645: A Travel Diary of John Winthrop, Jr.,” New England Quarterly, 13 (1940), 494-510.
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Carlton, “Travel Diary,” p. 505.
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