Joseph Priestley

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Joseph Priestley, March 24 [O.S.] [1733 to 18th-century English Separatist theologian, natural philosopher, innovator, multi-subject scholar, and liberal political theorist who has published more than 150 works.

Priestley has long been credited with the discovery of oxygen, having isolated it in its gaseous state, though Carl Wilhelm Scheele and Antoine Lavoisier have long defended his claims to the finding, the most notable of which being "dephlogisticated air" (oxygen).

Priestley's zealous defense of the phlogiston theory and his opposition to the impending chemical revolution left him isolated within the scientific community. Priestley's science was integral to his theology, and he had often attempted to blend Enlightenment rationalism with Christian theism.

Priestley attempted to blend theism, materialism, and determinism in his metaphysical writings, a program that has been dubbed "audacious and original" in his metaphysical texts.

He believed that a thorough knowledge of the natural world would aid human progress and eventually bring about the Christian millennium.

Priestley, a theologising thinker who firmly believed in a free and open exchange of ideas, argued for tolerance and equality for religious Dissenters, which eventually led him to the establishment of Unitarianism in England.

Priestley's books, as well as his outspoken support of the French Revolution, sparked public and government concern, and he was forced to leave in 1791, first to London and then to the United States, after a mob burned down his Birmingham home and cathedral.

He spent the ten years in Northumberland County, Pennsylvania. Priestley, a scholar and educator who contributed to pedagogy throughout his lifetime, edited a seminal book on English grammar and history, and he compiled some of the most influential early timelines.

These educational essays were among Priestley's most popular books.

It was however his metaphysical books that had the most lasting influence, being regarded as primary sources for utilitarianism by philosophers such as Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill, and Herbert Spencer.

Early life and education (1733–1755)

Priestley was born to an established English Dissenting family (i.e. In Birstall (near Batley) in the West Riding of Yorkshire, they did not adhere to the Church of England. He was the oldest of six children born to Mary Swift and Jonas Priestley, a fabric finisher. Around the age of one, Priestley was sent to live with his grandfather. He returned home five years after his mother's death five years ago. Priestley moved to live with his aunt and uncle, the wealthy and childless Sarah (d. 1764), and John Keighley, 3 miles (4.8 kilometers) from Fieldhead when his father returned from Fieldhead in 1741.

As a child, Priestley was extremely precocious—he could recite all 107 questions and answers of the Westminster Shorter Catechism—his aunt requested the best education for him, intending him to enter ministry at the age of four. Priestley attended local schools, where he learned Greek, Latin, and Hebrew in his youth.

Priestley became seriously ill in 1749 and thought he was dead. He was raised as a devout Calvinist, but doubted he had one. His emotional distress led him to question his theological upbringing, causing him to deny elections and accept universal salvation. As a result, the elders of his home church, the Independent Upper Chapel of Heckmondwike, refused to admit him as a full member.

Priestley's illness left him with a permanent stutter, and he had no intention of joining the ministry at the time. In preparation for joining a relative in Lisbon, he studied French, Italian, and German in addition to Aramaic and Arabic. Reverend George Haggerstone, who first introduced him to higher mathematics, natural philosophy, logic, and metaphysics, was tutored by Isaac Watts, Willem's Gravesande, and metaphysics by John Locke.

Priestley eventually returned to his theological studies and matriculated at Daventry, a Dissenting academy, in 1752. Priestley was able to skip the first two years of instruction because he had already read widely. He continued his studies, but his theology skewed even more leftward as a result of the school's liberal atmosphere, and he became a Rational Dissenter. Rational Dissenters emphasized the scientific investigation of the natural world and the Bible in the wake of abhorring dogma and religious mysticism.

Priestley later said that David Hartley's Observations on Man (1749) was the book that inspired him the most, rather than the Bible. Hartley's psychological, philosophical, and theological treatise introduced a material theory of mind. Hartley set out to develop a Christian philosophy in which both religious and moral "truth" could be scientifically verified, a goal that would occupy Priestley for his entire life. Priestley devoted himself to the ministry in his third year in Daventry, which he described as "the noblest of all professions."

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