Abstract
The chemist Edward Thorpe, editor-in-chief of Cavendish’s scientific papers, says of Cavendish what could not be said of any other British man of science of the time, that “almost every department of the physical science of his time appealed to him with equal force and he pursued all with equal zeal and success.” This observation is borne out by his publications, his unpublished manuscripts, the books he bought for his library, and testimony from the time. Key features of his pursuit include the quality of his mind, the manner in which he employed his senses, his ways of communicating with the scientific world, and the value he placed on objectivity, accuracy, precision, perfection, knowledge, and truth. His superior talent and application were recognized by his colleagues. Humphry Davy wrote: “Since the death of Newton, if I may be permitted to give an opinion, England has sustained no scientific loss so great as that of Cavendish.” For all intents and purposes, Cavendish’s life was his work, and all of his work was related to natural philosophy. The chapter concludes with “natural philosophy as a way of life” as it pertains to Cavendish.
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Notes
- 1.
John Walker to James Edward Smith, 16 Mar. 1810, in Memoir and Correspondence of the Late Sir James Edward Smith, M.D., 2 vols., ed. Lady Smith (London, 1832), 170–71.
- 2.
Thorpe, ibid., 326, 438.
- 3.
Cavendish, Scientific Papers 2: 355, 362–80. The pages contain manuscripts of Cavendish’s experiments on the pressure of water vapor and gases together with comments by the editor.
- 4.
Henry Cavendish, “An Account of the Meteorological Instruments Used at the Royal Society’s House,” PT 66 (1776): 375–401; in Cavendish, Scientific Papers 2: 112–26, on 116.
- 5.
Thorpe, “Introduction,” 6.
- 6.
Henry Cavendish, “An Account of Some Attempts to Imitate the Effects of the Torpedo by Electricity,” PT 66 (1776): 196–225.
- 7.
In response to a paper by his physician Everard Home, Cavendish with Blagden’s assistance carried out an experiment to detect changes in the convexity of the cornea accompanying changes in the focus. 8, 11, and 16 November 1795, Charles Blagden Diary, Royal Society 3: 75(back), 76, and 77(back).
- 8.
Cavendish’s young assistant James Lewis Macie presented him with the problem of determining the density of tabasheer, a hard substance located in the joints of tropical bamboo. Macie identified it correctly as siliceous earth. James Lewis Macie, “An Account of Experiments on Tabasheer,” PT 81 (1791): 368–88, on 370, 384–85, 388.
- 9.
27 April 1809, Minutes of Council, Royal Society 7: 527–31.
- 10.
The catalog is incomplete, extending only to the early 1790s. Cavendish continued to buy books after that.
- 11.
R. A. Harvey, “The Private Library of Henry Cavendish,” The Library 2 (1980): 281–84.
- 12.
Brougham, Lives 1: 251.
- 13.
Humphry Davy, quoted from a chemical lecture he gave in 1810. John Davy, Memoirs 1: 221. Humphry Davy, Elements of Chemical Philosophy (London, 1812) 1: 37. Humphry Davy, quoted in George Godfrey Cunningham, ed., Lives of Eminent and Illustrious Englishmen, vol. 8 (Glasgow, 1837), 169.
- 14.
Wilson, Cavendish, 187–88. In another place, Wilson seemed to have backed off from his statement that Cavendish evidently could not investigate other than quantitatively. “Many of his scientific researches were avowedly quantitative.” Ibid., 187. Here he said “many,” not “all.” With this wording, Wilson is correct.
- 15.
Thorpe in Cavendish, Scientific Papers 2: 317.
- 16.
Great Britain, Historical Manuscripts Commission, Report on Manuscripts in Various Collections, vol. 8: The Manuscripts of the Hon. Frederick Lindley Wood; M. L. S. Clements, Esq.; S. Philip Unwin, Esq. (London: His Majesty’s Stationary Office, 1913), 188–89.
- 17.
He descended from an illegitimate branch of Henry Cavendish’s family. An English and Irish politician, he is best known as a parliamentary diarist. Peter D. G. Thomas, “Cavendish, Sir Henry, second baronet (1732–1804),” DNB 10: 627–28.
- 18.
Arnold H. Buss, “A Conception of Shyness” in Avoiding Communication: Shyness, Reticence and Communication Apprehension, eds., J. A. Daley and J. C. McCrosky (Beverley Hills: Sage, 1984), 39–49, on 43.
- 19.
A Catalog of an Assortment of Modern Household Furniture … the Genuine Property of a Professional Gentleman; Which Will Be Sold by Auction by Mr. Squibb, at His Great Room Saville Passage, Saville Row, on Wednesday, December 5, 1810, and Two Following Days, at Twelve O’clock. Item 45 is a grand pianoforte, by Longman and Broderip, in a mahogany case. Devonshire Collections, Chatsworth.
- 20.
Lawrence D. Rosenblum, “A Confederacy of Senses,” Scientific American 308:1 (2013): 73–75, on 75.
- 21.
Nicolas Claude Le Cat, A Physical Essay on the Senses (London, 1750), 29, 284. Transcribed and summarized in Monthly Review, 2nd ed., 1 (May 1749): 20–29, 2 (March 1750): 364–68.
- 22.
Henry Cavendish, “An Account of a New Eudiometer,” PT 73 (1783): 106–35; in Cavendish, Scientific Papers 2: 127–44, quotation on 144.
- 23.
William Watson, “A Letter… Declaring That He as Well as Many Others Have Not Been Able to Make Odours Pass thro’ Glass by Means of Electricity …,” PT 46 (1750): 348–56.
- 24.
Lors and Margery Milne, The Senses of Animals and Men (New York: Atheneum, 1962), 147.
- 25.
Ibid., 18–19.
- 26.
Ibid., 39, 41.
- 27.
John Smeaton, “Description of a New Pyrometer, with a Table of Experiments Made Therewith,” PT 48 (1754): 598–613, on 600.
- 28.
He reasoned that “the loudness of the explosion should be in proportion to the quantity of phlogiston containd in the mixture.” Henry Cavendish, “Experiments on Factitious Air. Part IV,” in Cavendish, Scientific Papers 2: 307–16, on 309–10. He also designed a mechanical apparatus to measure the force, rather than the noise, of explosions of inflammable air. Henry Cavendish, “Measurer of Explosions of Inflam. Air,” ibid., 318–19. Thorpe, “Introduction,” 10.
- 29.
George Wilson, The Five Senses; or, Gateways to Knowledge (Philadelphia, 1860), 35–36.
- 30.
Henry Cavendish, “Arsenic,” Cavendish Scientific Manuscripts, Devonshire Collections, Chatsworth, 1(b), 10.
- 31.
Maxwell, in Cavendish, Electrical Researches, lvii–lviii. Experiments on electrical resistance, on 321–61.
- 32.
William Watson, “An Account of Professor Winkler’s Experiments Relating to Odours Passing through Electrified Globes and Tubes …,” PT 47 (1751): 231–41, on 237–38; “A Letter … Declaring That He as Well as Many Others Have Not Been Able to Make Odours Pass thro’ Glass by Means of Electricity,” 349.
- 33.
Henry Cavendish, “On the Conversion of a Mixture of Dephlogisticated and Phlogisticated Air into Nitrous Acid, by the Electric Spark,” PT 78 (1788), 261–76; in Cavendish, Scientific Papers 2: 224–32, on 227, 230.
- 34.
Henry Cavendish, “Answer to Mr. Kirwan’s Remarks upon the Experiments on Air,” PT 74 (1784), 170–77; in Cavendish, Scientific Papers 2: 182–186, on 182, 186.
- 35.
Watt, quoted in Samuel Smiles, Lives of the Engineers. Harbours – Bridges. Smeaton and Rennie, rev. ed. (London, 1874), 169.
- 36.
Charles Blagden to Joseph Banks, 24 December 1783, copy, Fitzwilliam Museum Library, Perceval, 178–79, on 178.
- 37.
William Cavendish, Devonshire Diary, 19–21.
- 38.
Cavendish, “On the Conversion of a Mixture of Dephlogisticated and Phlogisticated Air into Nitrous Acid, by the Electric Spark,” 229. The two words together with a third “exactness” were sometimes used interchangeably, and sometimes the words were applied to reasoning rather than to measurement. Young, in characterizing Cavendish’s work, spoke of the “precision of the experimental demonstration” and the “accuracy of the argumentative induction.” Young, “Cavendish,” 436. Dugald Stewart said that a natural philosopher was distinguished from other people by the “accuracy” of his observations and the “precision” of his judgments. The Collected Works of Dugald Stewart, Esq., F.R.SS., ed. W. Hamilton, 11 vols. (Edinburgh, 1854–60) 3: 242–44.
- 39.
30 November 1757, Journal Book, Royal Society 23: 639.
- 40.
James Bradley, Miscellaneous Works and Correspondence of the Rev. James Bradley, D.D., F.R.S., ed. S. P. Rigaud (Oxford, 1832), 237.
- 41.
James Bradley, “A Letter … Concerning an Apparent Motion Observed in Some of the Fixed Stars,” PT 45 (1748): 1–43, on 1–4.
- 42.
28 November 1764, Minutes of Council, Royal Society 4: 57.
- 43.
The Council resolved that Canton’s experiment was verified. 21 November 1765, ibid. 4: 141.
- 44.
Charles Cavendish, “Observations on Mr. Blake’s Objections to Mr. Canton’s Experiments,” Canton Papers, Royal Society.
- 45.
Two papers drawn up by Charles Cavendish were read to the Society, and a long summary of them was entered in the Journal Book, Royal Society 25: 668–79, on 670–71 (5 December 1765).
- 46.
Charles Cavendish sent Canton his computations and measures to review. This material is preserved in John Canton’s papers in the Royal Society.
- 47.
Henry Cavendish, “Three Papers, Containing Experiments on Factitious Air,” PT 56 (1766): 141–84; in Scientific Papers 2: 77–101.
- 48.
Henry Cavendish, “Boiling Point of Water. At the Royal Society, April 18, 1766,” in Cavendish, Scientific Papers 2: 351–53.
- 49.
“The Report of the Committee Appointed by the Royal Society to Consider of the Best Method of Adjusting the Fixed Points of Thermometers; and of the Precautions Necessary to Be Used in Making Experiments with Those Instruments,” PT 67 (1777): 816–57; the report is signed by the committee, Cavendish’s name coming first. Thorpe, “Introduction,” 56.
- 50.
The Council of the Society ordered its clerk to make daily observations of the weather “with the instruments to be procured for that purpose, & proper accommodations under the inspection of the Hon. Henry Cavendish,” 22 November 1773, Minutes of Council, Royal Society 6: 194. “The following scheme drawn up by the Hon. Henry Cavendish for the regulating the manner of making daily meteorological observations by the Clerk of the Royal Society …,” 9 December 1773, Minutes of Council, Royal Society 6: 197–200.
- 51.
Henry Cavendish, “An Account of the Meteorological Instruments Used at the Royal Society’s House,” PT 66 (1776): 375–401; in Cavendish, Scientific Papers 2: 112–26. The Society’s variation compass incorporated a contrivance taken from Charles Cavendish’s variation compass. Ibid., 120. Thorpe, “Introduction,” 53–56.
- 52.
Mr. Newman, son of the instrument maker, quoted in Wilson, Cavendish, 179.
- 53.
In this meaning, “precision” is the limit of accuracy in decimals. Ernest Child, The Tools of the Chemist (New York: Reinhold, 1940), 79. Maurice Daumas, Scientific Instruments of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, trans. M. Holbrook (New York: Praeger, 1972), 134–35, 221–23.
- 54.
Humphry Davy, quoted in John Davy, Memoirs 1: 221.
- 55.
Young, “Cavendish,” 444.
- 56.
Cuvier, quoted in Young, “Cavendish,” 444.
- 57.
Pierre Simon Laplace to Charles Blagden, 7 May 1785, Blagden Letters, Royal Society, L.181.
- 58.
Cuvier, “Cavendish,” 234, 236.
- 59.
Thomson, History of Chemistry 1: 339, 348.
- 60.
Young, “Cavendish,” 435–36.
- 61.
30 November 1765, Journal Book, Royal Society 25: 656.
- 62.
Thomson, History of Chemistry 1: 339.
- 63.
Brougham, Lives, 250.
- 64.
Playfair, Works 1: lxxxiv–lxxxv.
- 65.
Joseph Priestley to Henry Cavendish, 13 May 1784, Cavendish Scientific Manuscripts, Devonshire Collections, Chatsworth; in Jungnickel and McCormmach, Cavendish (1999), 593.
- 66.
Humphry Davy, quoted in John Davy, Memoirs 1: 221.
- 67.
Cuvier, “Cavendish,” 229.
- 68.
Wilson, Cavendish, 190.
- 69.
Henry Cavendish, “Experimental Determination of the Law of Electric Force,” in Electrical Researches, 104–13.
- 70.
Cavendish, “Experiments to Determine the Density of the Earth,” 284.
- 71.
James Short, “An Account of a Book, Intitled, P. D. Pauli Frisii Mediolanensis, & c. Disquisitio mathematica …, PT 48 (1753): 5–17, on 5–7.
- 72.
It makes no difference that he interpreted his chemical researches with the help of phlogiston. Within the phlogiston theory, which was the accepted theory at the time, he made no mistakes. Like all theories, the phlogiston theory came to be replaced.
- 73.
Joseph Priestley, Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air, 2d ed. (London, 1775), ix.
- 74.
Benjamin Franklin to Ebenezer Kinnersley, 20 February 1762, The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, vol. 10, ed. L. W. Labaree (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966), 37–53, on 42.
- 75.
30 November 1757, Journal Book, Royal Society 23: 638–39.
- 76.
21 October 1758, Thomas Birch Diary, British Library, Add Mss 4478C.
- 77.
Thorpe, in Cavendish, Scientific Papers 2: 297.
- 78.
Thorpe, ibid., 2: 327. Thorpe quotes Wilson.
- 79.
Ibid., 301.
- 80.
Ibid., 304–5.
- 81.
ibid., 316.
- 82.
Ibid., 371.
- 83.
Larmor in Cavendish, Scientific Papers 2: 428.
- 84.
Frank Watson Dyson, ibid., 433.
- 85.
Examples are the chapter “Cavendish and Modern Science,” in Berry, Cavendish, 175–91; and a summary of a number of anticipations in James Gerald Crowther, Scientists in the Industrial Revolution: Joseph Black, James Watt, Joseph Priestley, Henry Cavendish (London: Crescent Press, 1962), in Pearson, Serpent and Stag, 120.
- 86.
Crowther, Scientists in the Industrial Revolution, 304.
- 87.
Maxwell’s letter to W. Garnett, in July 1874, quoted by Larmor, “Preface to Volume 1,” in Cavendish Scientific Papers 1: vii.
- 88.
Maxwell, Electrical Researches of the Honourable Henry Cavendish, xlv.
- 89.
Charles Blagden to Lord George Augustus Henry Cavendish, n.d., Blagden Collection, Royal Society, Misc. Matter – Unclassified.
- 90.
Berry, Cavendish, 21.
- 91.
Thorpe said Cavendish “cared little for the judgment and opinion of his fellows.” “Introduction,” 6. A similar observation was made by Pierre Lépine and Jacques Nicoll, Sir Henry Cavendish: l’homme qui a pesé la terre (Paris: Seghers, 1964). This is pointed out by John Heilbron, who disagrees with it. Electricity in the 17th and 18th Centuries: A Study of Early Modern Physics (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979), 489.
- 92.
Crowther, Scientists in the Industrial Revolution, 318.
- 93.
Thorpe in Cavendish, Scientific Papers 2: 6. Humphry Davy, quoted, ibid. 2: 5. Wilson, Cavendish, 173.
- 94.
Thorpe, ibid.
- 95.
Joseph Priestley, Preface to Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air, 2d ed., 1775; quoted by Thorpe, “Introduction,” 6.
- 96.
Thorpe, ibid. But Wilson made the case that Cavendish delayed publication for the reason that he had not finished with his research, and as soon as he was finished he published. Cavendish, 442–44.
- 97.
Henry Cavendish to John Michell, 27 May 1783, draft; in Jungnickel and McCormmach, Cavendish (1999), 567–69, on 567.
- 98.
John Michell to Henry Cavendish, 2 July 1783; ibid., 570–78, on 570.
- 99.
Lord Liverpool, head of a select committee on coins, was satisfied with Cavendish’s opinion that the material could be published. Henry Cavendish to Charles Hatchett, 15 October 1802; Charles Hatchett to Joseph Banks, 24 October 1802, British Library, Add Mss 38424, f. 160.
- 100.
Charles Blagden to Joseph Banks, 24 and 26 October 1784, British Museum (NH), DTC 3: 83–86.
- 101.
Letter from Henry Cavendish to Martin van Marum, included in Henry Cavendish, “On the Conversion of a Mixture of Dephlogisticated and Phlogisticated Air into Nitrous Acid,” PT 78 (1788), 261–76; in Cavendish, Scientific Papers 2: 224–32, on 231–32.
- 102.
Thorpe, “Introduction,” 6.
- 103.
Quoted in John Davy, Memoirs 1: 221–22. Lidbetter gives a psychological explanation: because Cavendish was autistic, he did not spontaneously share his enjoyment, interests, and achievements with others. If Cavendish was autistic, this is a credible general reason for Cavendish’s habits of publication. Lidbetter misunderstands what Christa Jungnickel and I say in our Cavendish biography where he says we explain why Cavendish held back from publication by Cavendish’s” views on the inadequacy of language.” That is not what we say. In a discussion of Cavendish’s taciturnity we say that words, as used in normal speech, do not adequately represent Cavendish’s world; for that mathematics and quantities are essential. Publications are, of course, exactly where quantities and mathematical reasoning are proper and necessary. My co-author and I offered a suggestion arising from his work bearing on his habits of speech, not of publication. Lidbetter, “Henry Cavendish,” 786. Jungnickel and McCormmach, Cavendish (1996), 370–71.
- 104.
Larmor, “Preface to Volume 1,” ix.
- 105.
Watson, “A Letter… Declaring He as Well as Many Others Have Not Been Able to Make Odours Pass thro’ Glass,” 355–56.
- 106.
Quoted by Thorpe, “Introduction,” 6.
- 107.
Brougham, Lives 1: 257.
- 108.
Humphry Davy, quoted in Cavendish, Scientific Papers 2: 5–6.
- 109.
Young, “Cavendish,” 436.
- 110.
Wilson, Cavendish, 178.
- 111.
Charles Blagden to William Cullen, 7 June 1784, draft, Blagden Letterbook, Yale.
- 112.
Isaac Newton, Opticks; or A Treatise of the Reflexions, Refractions, Inflexions and Colours of Light, 4th ed., 1730, reprint (New York: Dover Publications, 1952), 372.
- 113.
Quoted in Frank Edward Manuel, The Religion of Isaac Newton (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974), 120.
- 114.
Henry Cavendish, “Plan of a Treatise on Mechanicks,” Cavendish Scientific Manuscripts, Devonshire Collections, Chatsworth, VI(b), 45: 17.
- 115.
Thomas Birch to Philip Yorke, 18 August 1750, British Library, Add Mss 35397.
- 116.
Guests and members who brought them are recorded in the Journal Books kept at the Royal Society Library.
- 117.
Cavendish was proposed 31 January 1760. Certificates, Royal Society, vol. 2, no. 10, f. 198.
- 118.
The record of the dinners and business of the Club at this time is kept in the Minute Book, Royal Society Club, Royal Society, 4 (1760–64). Archibald Geikie, Annals of the Royal Society Club: The Record of a London Dining-Club in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries (London: Macmillan, 1917), 63.
- 119.
The record of attendance is given in the Minutes of Council, Royal Society.
- 120.
Gowin Knight to Benjamin Wilson, 28 October 1768, Benjamin Wilson Papers, British Library, Add Mss, 3094. The importance the Royal Society placed on social rank is brought out in this letter. Knight says that the duke of Northumberland declined to be considered for the presidency, and he asked Wilson to urge his friend Sir George Savile to accept it. Savile was an important Whig politician who was interested in science, but he was not a scientific investigator.
- 121.
From Minutes of Council, Royal Society, 5–7 (1763–1810).
- 122.
Cavendish was elected trustee of the British Museum on 8 December 1773. The record of his attendance is in the minutes of the British Museum: Committee, volumes 5–9; General Meeting, volumes 3–5.
- 123.
John Michell to Charles Blagden, 27 July 1785, American Philosophical Society, Misc. MS Collection; in Russell McCormmach, Weighing the World: The Reverend John Michell of Thornhill (Dordrecht, Heidelberg, London: Springer, 2012), 386–94, on 391.
- 124.
Playfair, Works 1: lxxxiv.
- 125.
Children, quoted in Wilson, Cavendish, 169.
- 126.
Young, “Cavendish,” 444.
- 127.
Humphry Davy, quoted in Wilson, Cavendish, 167.
- 128.
Charles Blagden to Joseph Banks, 1 April 1802, British Library, Add Mss 33272, pp. 172–73. Charles Blagden to B. Delessert, 20 March 1810, Blagden Letters, Royal Society, D.44g.
- 129.
Humphry Davy, quoted in John Davy, Memoirs 1: 222.
- 130.
John Walker to James Edward Smth, 16 Mar. 1810.
- 131.
Young, “Cavendish,” 445.
- 132.
Raymond B. Cattell, Abilities: Their Structure, Growth, and Action (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1971), 410–11.
- 133.
John M. Cooper, “Ancient Philosophies as Ways of Life,” Oxford Philosophy (summer 2012), 16; Pursuits of Wisdom: Six Ways of Life in Ancient Philosophy from Socrates to Plotinus (Princeton, Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2012), 2–4.
- 134.
Charles Blagden to William Cullen, 17 June 1784, draft, Blagden Letterbook, Yale.
- 135.
Charles Blagden to Henry Cavendish, August 1789, draft; in Jungnickel and McCormmach, Cavendish (1799), 666–67.
- 136.
Cooper, Pursuits of Wisdom, 6.
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McCormmach, R. (2014). Life of Natural Philosophy. In: The Personality of Henry Cavendish - A Great Scientist with Extraordinary Peculiarities. Archimedes, vol 36. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02438-7_4
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