A special issue of the journal Science returns to Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and the first universities to examine how knowledge, education, and freedom were intertwined in the story of the founding of the United States—and why the promise of science has never been equally fulfilled for all Americans.
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When Americans adopted the Declaration of Independence 250 years ago, they had not established a scientific superpower. The United States had no research universities of the kind we know today, the government barely funded research, and the major centers of world science were in Europe. Yet a belief in knowledge, curiosity, and progress was woven into the American idea from the beginning. Special issue of the journal Science, published on the occasion of the 250th anniversary of the United States, examines the complex relationship between the democratic promise and American science – a relationship that has produced enormous achievements, but also exclusion, exploitation, and destruction.
Benjamin Franklin perhaps embodied this connection more than anyone else. He was a statesman and drafter of political institutions, but also a naturalist and experimenter interested in electricity, meteorology, ocean currents, and practical ways to improve life. For him, the search for the laws of nature and the search for a better form of government stemmed from the same source: the assumption that humans are capable of understanding the world and changing it through reason, investigation, and experience.
Thomas Jefferson also saw science and education as essential to the success of the republic. After he left office, he devoted much effort to establishing the University of Virginia. He even ordered a chemistry laboratory to be built in the basement of its rotunda, inspired by the French chemist Antoine Lavoisier, whose work he had become acquainted with during his mission in France. James Madison formulated the principle in clear terms: institutions of knowledge should be the preferred destination of every free people.
Science also enters the constitution
The connection between knowledge and the new state did not remain an abstract idea. The United States Constitution gave Congress the authority to promote the development of science and the useful arts by providing for a limited period of time protection for the rights of authors and inventors. The clause was intended to encourage creation and invention through patents and copyrights. It did not establish a system for funding research, but it did express the recognition that the production of knowledge was not a private matter: it could serve society as a whole.
However, the first American universities were not yet research institutions in the modern sense. Most of them were mainly concerned with teaching, training clergy, and the moral education of the elite. It was not until the late 19th century, and especially with the founding of Johns Hopkins University in 1876, that a new model began to take hold in the United States that combined teaching, advanced studies, and the creation of original knowledge. The model was largely based on German research universities, but the Americans adapted it to their own society and economy.
In the 20th century, a crucial component was added to the system: federal funding. World War II demonstrated to the government that universities, companies, and laboratories were capable of providing solutions to pressing national tasks. After the war, a system developed in which government agencies funded researchers on the basis of competition and peer review, while universities retained a large degree of independence in determining the methods of research. The combination of public money, scientific competition, and intellectual freedom became one of the foundations of American success.
A promise not meant for everyone
But the universal language of freedom, equality, and knowledge coexisted alongside a completely different reality. In 1776, most women could not attend universities, and Native Americans and African Americans were almost completely excluded from the institutions that defined what knowledge was and who was allowed to produce it. Millions of people lived in slavery, and their agricultural and technological expertise was also exploited without their names or contributions being recognized.
Botanist Rhonda Montgomery writes in the issue Science Because enslaved people brought with them vital knowledge of growing rice, indigo, tobacco, and sugarcane. She also tells of Antoine, an enslaved man from Louisiana, who in 1846 created the first commercial compound pecan variety. In many cases, the achievements were credited to the slave owners, while the knowledge holders themselves remained nameless.
This is one of the central contradictions in the history of American science: A society that celebrated freedom of thought relied for generations on the denial of freedom to many. It encouraged inventions, but did not always recognize inventors. It expanded the boundaries of knowledge, but also used scientific language to justify racial hierarchies, forced sterilization, and discrimination.
The same mechanism – enormous benefit and destructive power
The special issue of Science Rather than presenting American history as a list of victories, its editors have chosen to examine six intersections where science, state, and society met: the Manhattan Project, the forgotten contributions of enslaved people to agriculture, the emergence of biotechnology, the rise of Silicon Valley, the eugenics movement, and the space program.
Each of these cases reveals a contradiction. The Manhattan Project demonstrated the ability of scientists, engineers, industrialists, and government to work together on a scale previously unknown—but the result was also weapons of mass destruction and a secret research system that was subject to almost no democratic oversight. The space program expanded human knowledge and gave rise to new technologies, but grew out of military competition between superpowers. Silicon Valley became a symbol of private initiative, even though it was based on defense budgets, government contracts, investment in universities, and the absorption of immigrants.
This is not to say that scientific achievement is nullified because it is used harmfully, or that all government investment necessarily leads to progress. The argument is that science does not operate outside of society. The institutions that fund it, the people who decide what questions to investigate, and the entities that benefit from its results all influence its direction.
Trust is not created through public relations.
Holden Thorpe, editor-in-chief of the Thorpe family of journals Science, places the question of trust at the center of his opening article. He says that the scientific community often explains to the public why science is important, but that explanation alone does not create trust. Historian Beverly Gage, whom he interviewed, put it simply: “Trust is created when you do what you say you will do, and do it well.”
The public does not have to ignore failures to believe in science. One can acknowledge the contributions of research to health, life expectancy, technology, and the economy, while at the same time asking who benefited from it, who bore the risks, and who was not allowed to participate. Gage argues that self-criticism is not evidence of weakness. On the contrary: it allows institutions to move closer to their own stated goals.
This is especially true when scientific institutions are subject to political pressure. The American model succeeded not only because it was allocated large sums of money, but also because funding was based largely on the quality of research, open competition, and peer review. Replacing these principles with political loyalty or arbitrary decisions could undermine the infrastructure that has been built over generations. Ronald Daniels, president of Johns Hopkins University, warns that it is much easier to destroy functioning institutions than to rebuild them.
A love of homeland that never closes its eyes
One of the articles in the issue suggests thinking of the scientific history of the United States as a lovers' argument: not blind admiration that ignores the failures, but neither is it criticism that negates every achievement. The United States did indeed create a research system that vastly expanded human knowledge. That same system also served wars, strengthened centers of power, and expelled people who were partners in the creation of knowledge.
The 250th anniversary is not just an opportunity to list Nobel Prizes, inventions, and space missions. It is an opportunity to ask whether American science is still committed to the promise of knowledge that is open to criticism, of opportunity based on talent, and of utility that is not reserved for the few. It is also the test of the next 250 years: not just what discoveries will be made, but what kind of society will choose to make use of them.
This is the first article in the “America in Test Tube” series, based on The special issue of Science commemorating the 250th anniversary of the United StatesThe next article will deal with the birth of the American research university and the influence of the German model.
More on the subject on the science website
- 250 years of the United States: This is how the world's greatest scientific power was built — and how it endangers its future — A broad background review of the rise of US scientific hegemony and the threats to it today.
- The worship of God through popular science - on Joseph Priestley and the birth of the United States — On the connection between science, the Enlightenment, Benjamin Franklin, and the American Revolution.
- The war on science is getting a step higher: we must restore trust in science to save democracy and the future of humanity — On the relationship between scientific evidence, trust in institutions, and the functioning of democracy.
- The Jews, the Nazis and the race for the atomic bomb — For the contribution of European immigrant scientists to the Manhattan Project initiative and the establishment of the American wartime scientific system.
- On eugenics and genetics - how genetic engineering will change the vision of the superior race — On the roots of eugenics, sterilization laws, and the connection between genetics, political power, and discrimination.
- Declining public trust in scientists and the contribution of science to humanity in the US — Data on the erosion of trust in scientists and the political gaps regarding science in the United States.
