Jacob Bronowski - Michael Mosley TV - jquarter online -
Societies like the Lunar Society represent the sense of the makers of that revolution – that very English sense – that they had a social responsibility. Jacob Bronowski, The Ascent of Man 8/13: The Drive For Power, BBC 1973
Matthew Boulton [1728-1809] was an entrepreneur who belonged to the Lunar Society. So called because they met on the night of the full moon. They were industrialists, experimenters, and natural philosophers who all shared a love of practical knowledge. A leading Lunar man was Scottish engineer James Watt [1736-1819]. Michael Mosley, The Story of Science: Power, Proof and Passion, BBC 2010
The Lunar Society: where men of science and business could meet and exchange ideas – technical innovations like high-power steam. The promise of money and the protection of patents. ibid.
The Lunar Society was a remarkable grouping of gifted polymaths who met every month in and around Birmingham on the Monday nearest the full moon (when there was most light to travel home by) from 1765 until 1813. To begin with, they called themselves the Lunar Circle, the more formal title ‘Lunar Society’ being adopted in 1775.
It has been written that, ‘The Lunar Society was second only to the Royal Society in its importance as a gathering place for scientists, inventors and natural philosophers during the second half of the eighteenth century’. In fact, it was more than that. These men were interested not merely in science, but especially in the application of science to manufacturing, mining, transportation, education, medicine and much else. They were, if you like, the revolutionary committee of that most far reaching of all the eighteenth century revolutions, the Industrial Revolution. Supremely confident, they were changing the world forever, and they knew it. They firmly believed that what they were doing would better the lot of mankind. They believed, as Jacob Bronowski put it, that ‘the good life is more than material decency, but the good life must be based on material decency’. They believed that by raising productive capacity they would be able to deliver material decency for all, and to a large extent, as far as the developed world is concerned, they have been proven right. Historians today talk of the ‘Midlands Enlightenment’, which was contemporaneous with the Parisian and Edinburgh enlightenments, but distinguished by its emphasis on going beyond thought, putting theory into practice and translating ideas into action. The Lunar Society was the heart of that Midlands Enlightenment. jquarter online article