Description
Book SynopsisTrade Review“Robert E. Schofield's last volume of his biography of Priestley devotes detailed chapters both to philosophical doctrines and to the extraordinary controversies they engendered. No author has done a better job at laying out the complexities of a materialism that Priestley saw as compatible with Christianity and of a necessitarianism he thought would rescue Protestantism from the absurdity of Calvinist doctrine. . . . He has written in a masterly way about a subject that is uniquely his own.”
—Margaret C. Jacob Journal of American History
“Robert Schofield has done this remarkable man proud. Others may write shorter and perhaps more popular biographies of Joseph Priestley, but they will do so in the shadow of this magisterial work.”
—Derek A. Davenport Bulletin for the History of Chemistry
“Undaunted by the great mass, intellectual range and contextual variety of Joseph Priestley’s work and life, Robert Schofield deserves our lasting gratitude for bringing to bear a scholarly lifetime’s knowledge of his subject in this concluding volume of his intellectual biography.”
—John Christie Times Higher Education Supplement
“Schofield succeeds brilliantly.”
—Michael F. Conlin Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography
Table of ContentsContents
List of Illustrations
List of Abbreviations
Preface
Part I Calne, 1773–1780
1. Shelburne and Politics
2. Religion and Theology
3. "Common–Sense" and Associationism
4. Matter and Spirit
5. Philosophical Necessity
6. Observations on Air I and II: Oxygen
7. Observations on Air III and Natural Philosophy I
Part II Birmingham, 1780–1791
8. Science and the Lunar Society
9. Science and the Chemical Revolution
10. Religion
11. Theology
12. Education, Metaphysics, History
13. Politics and the Birmingham Riots
Part III Clapton/Hackney (1791–1794) and Northumberland, Pennsylvania (1794–1804)
14. Politics, Science, Education, Religion
15. Emigration to the United States, Politics, and Education
16. Science
17. Religion, Death
Appendix: Family
Bibliography
Index
