Honoring Jefferson: A Life-Centered Philosopher

In Atlas Shrugged, Dr. Robert Stadler finds it "outrageous" that a genius such as John Galt would have "performed a major revolution in the science of energy, just as a means to an end." "Why," Stadler demands, "did he want to waste his mind on practical appliances?" Dagny Taggart answers: "Perhaps because he liked living on earth."

That reply summarizes the spirit of the American Enlightenment-most especially, the spirit of the man whose 255th birthday we celebrate on April 13.

Thomas Jefferson is best known as the leading "classical liberal" in American history. Author of the Declaration of Independence, he outlined the political principles that launched a revolution. Framer of the Virginia Statute for Religious Liberty, he spearheaded early efforts to separate church and state. President of the United States, he fostered the fledgling country's continental expansion.

But Jefferson was much more than a philosopher and statesman of freedom. His omnivorous appetite for the facts of nature (including human nature) is reflected in his only book, Notes on the State of Virginia, which contains exhaustive observations on every aspect of his state's natural and social environment: its flora, fauna, populations, mountains, rivers, geology, manufactures, and laws.

Even as president, Jefferson conducted botanical expeditions. Noted a contemporary: "He would climb rocks, or wade through swamps to obtain any plant he discovered or desired and seldom returned from these excursions without a variety of specimens." In his Washington residence, writes one historian, "we see him not only with his beloved flowers, plants, books, and pet mockingbird, but also with carpenter's tools, garden implements, maps, globes, charts, a drafting board, and scientific instruments." The East Room was cluttered with a huge fossil collection, while on the lawn frolicked young grizzly bears brought from the west by Meriwether Lewis. Yet this combination of White House, workshop, and museum did not betoken a dilettante. Far from it. Jefferson is, surely, the only president who ever read Newton's Principia in Latin or could correct America's leading astronomer on its interpretation.

But Jefferson did like living on earth, and when he writes of his scientific interests, one is struck by the predominantly practical cast of his mind. For the same reason, Jefferson's Monticello estate is an enduring monument to a powerful intellect engaged on human problems. An indefatigable gadgeteer, Jefferson filled Monticello-which he himself designed-with mechanical innovations: a complex clock in the front hallway, dumbwaiters, a revolving bookstand, a portable writing table, an invention to duplicate letters as he wrote, even a special ventilation and cooling system. The grounds are a showcase for his interests in botany and scientific agriculture.

The Jeffersonian premise-that knowledge should enhance human life-was more broadly an Enlightenment premise. In the year of Jefferson's birth, Benjamin Franklin established an organization with a strikingly life-centered agenda: to conduct all "Experiments that let Light into the Nature of Things, tend to increase the Power of Man over Matter, and multiply the Conveniences or Pleasures of Life." In 1769, this scientific organization became the American Philosophical Society, for science at that time was termed "natural philosophy."

From Jefferson, the Society received designs for new inventions, observations on establishing weights and measures, and correspondence on everything from meteorology to fossils. He was perfectly at home discussing the heavens or mechanics with astronomer David Rittenhouse; medicine and anatomy with the peerless Dr. Benjamin Rush; flora and fauna with Benjamin Smith Barton, the nation's leading botanist and anthropologist; and chemistry with the renowned Joseph Priestley.

Jefferson came to be held in such high esteem by these eminent scientists that he was elected the Society's president in 1796, a post they then refused to let him quit for nearly two decades. Historian Daniel J. Boorstin writes that this was "simple recognition of his leadership in American intellectual life."

Why did this generalist command the respect of so many specialists? Boorstin answers that Jefferson "possessed a mind more catholic than theirs and better able to see nature as a whole. Being a statesman, he persistently demanded the human implications of their science." In that way, he "drew them together and gave order and meaning to their discrete investigations."

In short, Thomas Jefferson became the leader of the American Enlightenment because, in countless areas, he focused the thinking of America's best and brightest on the task of advancing, not pure reason, but human life. On the occasion of his birthday, then, let us remember him not just as a Founding Father and advocate of liberty. Let us remember him also as America's first biocentric philosopher.

Robert James Bidinotto is director of development and special projects at the Institute for Objectivist Studies.