Joseph Priestley (redirected from J. Priestley)

Priestley, Joseph 

Born Mar. 13, 1733, in Fieldhead, near Leeds; died Feb. 6, 1804, in Northumberland, Pa. British materialist philosopher, chemist, and public figure. Son of a weaver.

Priestley was ordained after graduating from divinity school. He defended the principle of toleration, spoke out against British colonial domination during the American War of Independence (1775–1783), and welcomed the French Revolution. Persecution forced him to emigrate to the United States in 1794. Priestley was a member of the Royal Society of London (1767) and the Paris Académie des Sciences (1772) and was elected an honorary member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences in 1780.

Engaged in a passionate long-standing debate with proponents of various idealist schools, Priestley believed that nature is material and that the mind, or spirit, is a property of matter. He held that matter obeys its own ineluctable, intrinsic laws and elaborated this theory in his Disquisitions Relating to Matter and Spirit (1777). However, adhering to the principles of deism, Priestley believed that these very laws were the product of divine reason. He linked the notion of strictest causal necessity of all phenomena to the principle of the materiality of the world, repudiating the position of theologians who maintained that man, construed as a particle of matter, would no longer be responsible for his actions.

Priestley developed and popularized D. Hartley’s doctrine that all psychic processes, including abstract thought and volition, are governed by laws of association implanted in the nervous system. This doctrine facilitated the widespread dissemination of a materialist outlook on psychic phenomena not only in Great Britain but also in other countries. Priestley opposed the philosophy of the Scottish school.

In 1766, Priestley began research in pneumatic chemistry. In 1771 he showed that air, contaminated by combustion or respiration, becomes suitable for breathing when exposed to the green parts of plants. In 1772 he established that nitric oxide converts to nitrogen peroxide upon exposure to air. In the years 1772–74, Priestley, using a mercury trough for gas collection, was the first to obtain hydrogen chloride and ammonia. Simultaneously with K. Scheele, in 1774, he discovered oxygen and went on to isolate, in pure form, silicon fluoride, sulfur dioxide (1775), and carbon monoxide (1799). Although he enriched chemistry with many new facts, Priestley was unable to explain them properly because of his adherence to the erroneous phlogiston theory.

Priestley is also the author of several valuable works on the history of science as, for example, his studies on electricity and optics. He also wrote on the problems of methodology in scientific research.

WORKS

The Theological and Miscellaneous Works, vols. 1–25. London, 1817–32.
In Russian translation:
Izbr. soch. Moscow, 1934.
In Angliiskie materialisty 18 v., vol. 3. Moscow, 1968.

REFERENCES

Istoriia filosofii, vol. I. Moscow, 1957. Pages 615–19.
Figurovskii, N. A. Ocherk obshchei istorii khimii: Ot drevneishikh vremen do nachala XIX v. Moscow, 1969. Pages 304–10.
Holt, A. D. A Life of J. Priestley. London, 1931.
Gillam, J. G. The Crucible: The Story of J. Priestley. London, 1954.
Priestley’s Writings on Philosophy, Science and Politics. Edited and with an introduction by J. A. Passmore. New York-London, 1965.

M. G. IAROSHEVSKII