Science and Society in the Age of Revolutions

Science took place both thanks to and in spite of the age of revolutions. In Philadelphia, the era saw the creation of the American colonies’ first hospital and school of medicine. Collaboration between astronomers, instrument-makers, and surveyors benefited from increased association-building activity that marked the period. Engineers and electrical experimenters endeavored to solve problems like access to clean drinking water and energy storage. Yet, the optimism and problem-solving impulses of this age of scientific revolutions also exploited inequalities and refracted power dynamics, making science a useful lens for exploring the impact of the age of revolutions on science and society.

As the upcoming 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence drives increased interest in the founding of the United States, this conference, co-hosted by the American Philosophical Society’s Library & Museum, the Science History Institute, and the College of Physicians aims to widen the scope of such conversations. Inspired in part by the APS’s 2025 exhibition, Philadelphia: The Revolutionary City and “America’s Scientific Revolutionaries,” a multiyear project funded by the Lounsbery Foundation this conference will feature research that illuminates the intersections of science and society in the Atlantic World between 1764 and 1804.

Register for this event!
This event is free and open to the public. Please register to attend this event in person or virtually. Livestream information will be provided closer to the event date.

Program:
Science and Society in the Age of Revolutions
September 25-26, 2025
Hosted by the American Philosophical Society, the Science History Institute, and the College of Physicians

Note: times are subject to change All times are listed in ET

Thursday, September 25, 2025
Benjamin Franklin Hall–427 Chestnut Street

12:15pm Registration Opens

12:45-1:00pm Welcome and Introductions

1:00-2:30pm Panel One: Science on the Front Lines 

• Vaughn Scribner (University of Central Arkansas) "Devastation Nation: Emotional Suffering among Soldiers in the American Revolutionary War”
• Adam Bridgen (University of Oxford) "Naval Medicine and Abolitionism: The Contexts and International Influence of Thomas Trotter’s Observations on the Scurvy (1786)”
• Steve Walton (Michigan Technological University) "Founding the Cannon of a Nation: State sponsorship and heavy military industries in the Revolution”

2:30-3:00pm Break

3:00-5:00pm Panel Two: Networks and Scientific Diplomacy

• Ellen Cohn (The Papers of Benjamin Franklin) "The Beginnings of American Botany"
• Michael Guenther (Grinnell College) "Tale of Two Jacobins: Scientific Networks and Revolutionary Politics in the 1790s”
• Anna Toledano (Los Altos History Museum) “Shipping and Statecraft: Valentín de Foronda, Guinea Grass, and the Decline of Spanish Colonial Power in the Americas”
• Jessica Lepler (University of New Hampshire) “Dreams of Canals and Climate Change: Citizen Science at the end of the Age of Revolutions”

5:00-6:00pm Reception

6:00-7:00pm Keynote: Science in American Life: The Public Role of History of Science at the U.S. 250th

Friday, September 26, 2025
Benjamin Franklin Hall–427 Chestnut Street

8:30-9:00am Light Breakfast

9:00-10:30am Panel Three: Everyday Science

• Mary Ashburn Miller (Reed College) “Restoring the ‘Apparently Dead’ to Life: Anti-Drowning Measures and Public Health in the Late Eighteenth Century”
• Clare Tonks (Yale Center for British Art) “The Teeth Trade: Dentures and Dental Disease in the Age of Revolutions”
• Holly Gruntner (George Washington's Mount Vernon) “Thy Industrious Neighbor:” Kitchen Gardens, Horticultural Knowledge, and Local Circulation Networks'

10:30-11:00am Break

11:00-12:30pm Panel Four: Explorers, Exploration, and Collecting

• Cameron Strang (University of Nevada, Reno) “Pursuits of Knowledge and Happiness: Revolutionary Black Explorers”
• Diego Pirillo (University of California, Berkeley)  “Museums, Antiquarians and Indigenous Dispossession”
• Laura Clerx (Boston College) “The Science of Settlement: Western Land Companies and Eastern Scientific Societies in the early national United States”

Program moves to Science History Institute–315 Chestnut Street

12:30-2:00pm Lunch and Exhibition Open House

2:00-4:00pm Panel Five: Marvels of Science and Sight 

• Sean Silver (Rutgers University) "Edward Bancroft’s Drab Revolution”
• Caroline Douglas (Royal College of Art)  “Edinburgh to Philadelphia: Elizabeth Fulhame and the Chemical Networks of Early Photography”
• Al Coppola (John Jay College of Criminal Justice) Science, Farce, and Fictionality: The Wonders of Katterfelto”
• Mary Richie McGuire (Virginia Polytechnic Institute) “View down James river from Mr. Nicholson’s House above Rocketts: Benjamin Henry Latrobe’s Observations of the Chesapeake Rivers, 1796-1801”

4:00-4:30pm Wrap up Discussion