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| Josiah Wedgwood and grandparents of Charles Darwin |
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| Erasmus Darwin Both lunar men |
In his entertaining book about the working of capitalism, How to Speak Money, John Lanchester wrote that, if somebody comes up with a bright idea and asks for money to help it get off the ground, adding ‘we will work out how to monetise it later’, then you should get out of the room as quickly as possible. Cynical but sound advice.
People did not always think like that. In the middle of the eighteenth century, as the Industrial Revolution was changing Britain forever, a group of men used to meet on the night of the full moon every month. This was because there was no street-lighting to speak of and they could make their way with the aid of moonlight. They were known as ‘lunar men’, sometimes simply, if affectionately, as ‘lunaticks’.
This group included Joseph Priestley, who discovered oxygen, James Watt, who developed steam power, Josiah Wedgwood, who built up the famous pottery company and his friend Erasmus Darwin, family doctor and inventor. Also floating around the group were James Keir, who worked with Priestley and was successful at both geology and industry and Mathew Boulton, who worked with Watt on steam power and can be seen with him on the £50 note - at least until Alan Turing arrives next year.
Turing relied mostly on the government for his income, working as an academic and a codebreaker at Bletchley Park. The Lunar Men, however, saw no contradiction in making money and developing new ideas. In fact, the two were intimately related in their world view. Watt was a cautious and suspicious Scot while Keir, also Scottish, was bolder and had a good eye for business. He was interested in geology, which is not notably lucrative, but made a handsome fortune from his glassworks business.
Today, the role of businessman and scientist are strictly separated. The successful Chief Executive Officer of a company will probably be a ruthless cutter of costs who is good at buying low and selling high, the secret of all good business. This may mean laying off lots of people who do not contribute enough to profitability. The ability and willingness to do this leads to a big income, if not to universal popularity.
Meanwhile, the job of coming up with new ideas and products is left to those who work in R and D (research and development). This might involve inventing a new app for our smartphones or copying the fashion ideas of someone else without making it too obvious that you are ripping them off. This is always a tricky area and many companies will need good lawyers to help them negotiate this minefield.
Everyone in a company has a role and they develop the special skills needed to excel in their area of expertise. The lunar men did not operate like that but went where their curiosity took them and, if they could make money out of what they found, that was great but, if not, it was often still worth the journey to find a new idea.
This ability to investigate ideas for their own sake and at the same time to make a decent living is one I find fascinating. Turning a profit was not something to be ashamed of but it was not the whole point of life. Finding out new things, talking about new ideas, combining practicality with curiosity was the stuff of life for them.
We are all products of our time and Britain was awash with curiosity in the middle of the eighteenth century when the industrial revolution and the enlightenment worked in tandem to encourage people to investigate and, to use the modern word, monetise at the same time. When a new idea arrived you noted it down, discussed it with your fellow enquirers and then wondered if it promised any profitability for your business.
Erasmus Darwin is not the best known of the lunar men because he was a working doctor in a midlands town. He was, literally, a man of substance, inclined to being overweight, cheerful but with a touch of melancholy, always curious, usually compassionate. He treated the poor for free if they came to him, subsidising his benevolence by going to visit richer patients and charging them for his services.
He had several children, outliving his wife, who succumbed to dependence on alcohol. The nurse he hired became his mistress, but not his wife because she was not from the right class. (Benevolence obviously had its limits.) His son Charles married the daughter of his friend Josiah Wedgwood and their son was Charles Darwin, the famous naturalist and the man who wrote On the Origin of the Species.
The lunar men were not atheists but they were doubters. Joseph Priestley was a Unitarian, one who believed in God but not the literal truth of the Bible, a view for which he was attacked, both verbally and physically in the Birmingham Riots which followed the French Revolution. Priestley ended up emigrating to America where he died, a great loss to Britain and a blot on our record of tolerating free-thinking types.
While Priestley continued to believe in God, Charles Darwin’s doubts eroded his faith. He kept his findings hidden so as not to offend his more conventionally pious wife but the fact that Wallace Stevens was coming up with similar ideas led Darwin to take the plunge and publish. Then the brown stuff really hit the fan and it became increasingly difficult to reconcile religion and science.
That all too brief glorious time when someone could combine a love of science, belief in God and the ability and willingness to make money was coming to an end. We are all the poorer for it as a result. Live on lunar men – but only as a memory.
My other blog is diaryofatouristguide.blogspot.com
Edwin Lerner
