Joseph Priestley, (born March 13, 1733, Birstall Fieldhead, near Leeds, Yorkshire [now West Yorkshire], England—died February 6, 1804, Northumberland, Pennsylvania, U.S.), English clergyman, political theorist, and physical scientist whose work contributed to advances in liberal political and religious thought and in experimental chemistry.
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Schofield explains it thus: "Priestley was never a chemist; in a modern, and even a Lavoisierian, sense, he was never a scientist.
The most exhaustive biography of Priestley is Robert Schofield 's two-volume work; several one-volume treatments exist, all somewhat older: Gibbs, Holt and Thorpe. Graham and Smith focus on Priestley's life in America and Uglow and Jackson both discuss Priestley's life in the context of other developments in science.
Many of the friends that Priestley made in Birmingham were members of the Lunar Society , a group of manufacturers, inventors, and natural philosophers who assembled monthly to discuss their work. The core of the group included men such as the manufacturer Matthew Boulton, the chemist and geologist James Keir, the inventor and engineer James Watt, and the botanist, chemist, and geologist William Withering. Priestley was asked to join this unique society and contributed much to the work of its members. As a result of this stimulating intellectual environment, he published several important scientific papers, including "Experiments relating to Phlogiston, and the seeming Conversion of Water into Air" (1783). The first part attempts to refute Lavoisier's challenges to his work on oxygen; the second part describes how steam is "converted" into air. After several variations of the experiment, with different substances as fuel and several different collecting apparatuses (which produced different results), he concluded that air could travel through more substances than previously surmised, a conclusion "contrary to all the known principles of hydrostatics". This discovery, along with his earlier work on what would later be recognised as gaseous diffusion, would eventually lead John Dalton and Thomas Graham to formulate the kinetic theory of gases.
DOCTOR PHLOGISTON, The PRIESTLEY politician or the Political Priest: An anti-Priestley cartoon shows him trampling on the Bible and burning documents representing English freedom. "Essays on Matter and Spirit", "Gunpowder", and "Revolution Toasts" bulge from his pockets.
He had discovered oxygen gas (O 2 ). William Petty, 2nd Earl of Shelburne – a fellow Unitarian – built a laboratory for the famous dissenter at Bowood House. Priestley assembled his oxygen paper and several others into a second volume of Experiments and Observations on Air, published in 1776.
In 1780 the Priestleys moved to Birmingham and spent a happy decade surrounded by old friends, until they were forced to flee in 1791 by religiously motivated mob violence in what became known as the Priestley Riots. Priestley accepted the ministerial position at New Meeting on the condition that he be required to preach and teach only on Sundays, so that he would have time for his writing and scientific experiments. As in Leeds, Priestley established classes for the youth of his parish and by 1781, he was teaching 150 students. Because Priestley's New Meeting salary was only 100 guineas, friends and patrons donated money and goods to help continue his investigations. He was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1782.
When Priestley became its minister, Mill Hill Chapel was one of the oldest and most respected Dissenting congregations in England; however, during the early 18th century the congregation had fractured along doctrinal lines, and was losing members to the charismatic Methodist movement. Priestley believed that by educating the young, he could strengthen the bonds of the congregation.
Joseph Priestley (1733—1804) A notable Enlightenment polymath, Joseph Priestley published almost two hundred works on natural philosophy, theology, metaphysics, political philosophy, politics, education, history and linguistics. Remembered today primarily as a scientist who isolated oxygen, Priestley considered his calling to be that ...
Priestley was born on March 13th, 1733 at Birstall Fieldhead, a small village just southwest of Leeds where his family had lived and worked for several generations. His father, Jonas Priestley, was a wool-cloth dresser and his mother, Mary Swift, came from a farming family.
Priestley believed that perception, knowledge, intellect, and memory were acquired through sensory experience and that simple ideas combined into complex ideas through a process of association. This mechanism was entirely material and therefore based on necessary causal laws determined by God.
Priestley undermined the divinity of Jesus and in doing so deeply altered the whole interpretation of his death and resurrection. Priestley insisted that the death of Jesus was only a sacrifice in the figurative sense. His death was not a means by which the wrath of God had been diverted, and his sacrifice was not an atonement for sin. Jesus was not a divine mediator between God and humanity; he was a savior simply because his life was a demonstration of perfect moral duty and the truth of physical resurrection.
The metaphysical basis for Priestley’s disavowal of the existence of the soul is explored in the section of this article on “Matter and Spirit .” Priestley combined exploration of the nature of matter with scriptural study to argue for the unity of body and spirit, insisting on the biblical basis for a belief in physical resurrection. He writes that there is no scriptural basis for a split between body and soul. Not only is belief in the soul unreasonable based on the evidence around us, writes Priestley, it is also a belief which careful historical exploration shows was an idolatrous heathen tenet that crept into Christianity and slowly corrupted it.
At the heart of Priestley’s political philosophy lie the twin themes of progress and perfectibility. His work is shot-through with an optimism that arises from his unswerving belief in progress and a perfect future state. Priestley’s work rests on an assumption that humankind will be better off in the future than it is at present and that society in the present is already more perfect than life in the past. Unlike brute animals who continue in the same way without change, human society is constantly in a state of development, change and improvement. He tells us of the happiness he experiences because of the realization that whatever the world was like at the beginning the end will be perfect and “paradisiacal.” Importantly, mankind’s unbounded potential for future development requires good government, and, going full circle, good government here means government conducive to progress.
It is impossible to separate Priestley’s metaphysical opinions about matter and spirit from his theology. His speculations on the nature of matter provided Priestley with scientific and physiological evidence to deny the existence of the soul. Some thinkers insisted that matter was inert and animated only by a God-given soul. Priestley’s matter was different. It was not inert. Matter was complex and active. It was possible for the brain to be wholly material and also to vibrate and therefore to “think” rather than a passive vehicle moved by an immaterial soul. When Priestley examined the atheism of Baron d’Holbach he stated that it was one of the most convincing arguments he had come across. This was because d’Holbach shared some of his ideas on the nature of matter. However, d’Holbach held that forces of attraction and repulsion, gravity and electricity were simply the “energy of nature.” Priestley said that this was another name for God, an energy which should be acknowledged as having intelligence and design. His continued faith meant that Priestley never relinquished scriptural study and examined the Bible in relation to his understanding of matter.
Joseph Priestley FRS was an English chemist, natural philosopher, separatist theologian, grammarian, multi-subject educator, and liberal political theorist who published over 150 works. He has historically been credited with the independent discovery of oxygen in 1774 by the thermal decomposition of mercuric oxide, having isolated it. Although Swedish chemist Carl Wilhelm Sch…