Knowlton
Going to New Harmony!
05/21/2010 07:35
Knowlton was a friend of Robert Dale Owen, and probably knew Frances Wright (Nashoba). As a freethinker and a doctor, he had a strange status in Franklin County society. He and his Free Enquirer Society friends (men and women, because the Society considered women full members with all the rights of their male counterparts) were clearly interested in utopian ideas well outside the mainstream of their Western Massachusetts communities. But what did they do about it? Did the fact that they stayed home give them any influence on their home communities? Politics? Culture? I’m looking forward to talking about this, and to hearing what other people have been thinking about intentional communities this fall.
Knowlton in print again!
01/28/2010 10:10
To the right, a title page from Knowlton's Fruits of Philosophy, from the article. Note the origin and date: Philadelphia, 1839. The little pamphlet got around!
Fruits of Philosophy, 1836
12/16/2009 20:44
The Knowltons and the Kneelands
06/14/2009 10:39
Like Knowlton, Abner Kneeland was a member of a respected central Massachusetts family. Abner was a grandson of Timothy Kneeland, the third resident of Gardner. The Kneeland family remained prominent in Gardner, where Charles’ brothers Emery and Augustus settled and became chair manufacturers. Gardner is five miles from Templeton, where Charles grew up. Kneeland was 26 years older than Knowlton, and was employed as a schoolteacher about the time Knowlton was born. Two years later, he published his first book (the American Definition Spelling Book), and by the time Charles was five, Abner was in Langdon, NH, being ordained as a Baptist minister.
It might be interesting to trace the lives of these two men, since they came from similar backgrounds and ultimately found each other in the freethought movement, where they were both imprisoned for unpopular beliefs (where was Kneeland incarcerated? Cambridge, like Knowlton?). Since a very small minority of people with their backgrounds developed these views (as far as we currently know), and since Kneeland wrote about the beginnings of the labor movement (and Knowlton’s brothers were small-scale capitalists, probably employing a couple of dozen workers in their chair factory), this connection might lead in interesting directions.
Knowlton in Ashfield, 1833
01/26/2009 10:44
One of the things that interests me about the people I’m studying in the early 19th century, is their generally high level of literacy and understanding of what’s going on in the world, in spite of the remoteness of places like Ashfield.
When the religious bigots in his Berkshire hill-town of 1800 people tried to ruin his business, Dr. Charles Knowlton called the town to a meeting and made a long speech about belief, morality and politics. The year was 1833: Knowlton had published his Fruits of Philosophy the year before, and was using it with his patients in Franklin county.
“He that will not reason is a bigot, he that cannot reason is a fool, and he that dares not reason is a slave!” Knowlton announced to his neighbors.
“I proceed—
“There are no changes, no events, in a word, no effects without causes, and one effect as necessarily follows its cause as another, whether it occur within a man’s head or without. Every feeling of man, every thought of his brain, as necessarily has its cause as the movement of a water-wheel; and we all as necessarily think as we do think, as rocks unsupported fall to the ground. To admit that a man may think as he has a mind to, is not to admit one whit against what I have now advanced. To have a mind to think so and so, is but to have thoughts and ideas that you will think so and so,—every one of which thoughts or ideas must and does have its cause; which cause, whatever it may be, is but the effect of a prior cause, and this, again, the effect of a still prior cause, and so on throughout the eternal chain of events.”
“All those changes within a man’s head, called intellectual operations, such as remembering, judging, belief, &c. consist entirely of sensorial actions, called thoughts or ideas, which follow one after another, and every one of which has its cause.” (text of the speech as reported by Knowlton here)
The philosophy behind Knowlton’s ideas is remarkably like the 20th-century psychology of behaviorism. Knowlton had published a nearly 450-page book about his theories, called Modern Materialism, in 1829.
The crux of Knowlton’s argument to his neighbors is that freedom of opinion is the basis of American society. Knowlton’s grandfather and father had fought in the Revolution; it was still a recent event. Knowlton asked the townspeople to judge him by his behavior, not his beliefs. He subtly but unmistakably suggests that those who want to judge people by their beliefs rather than their actions (the minister and his friends) choose this because they know their actions will not stand close scrutiny. His charge against the church was dramatically proven when the congregation excommunicated a long-time member who stood up to the minister and supported his friend and doctor, Knowlton. The church was divided over the issue, and the minister was ultimately forced to resign.
The things that really strike me about Knowlton’s speech are the modernity of the argument, and the generally high level of its language and ideas. Knowlton was clearly an odd man, but he had some experience in public speaking. He was probably pitching his argument appropriately for his audience, which suggests they were an intelligent and well-read crowd. This is especially interesting, as most of them were back-country farmers and sheep-herders. An intellectual history of regular people might help me get a better idea of what these people were reading, thinking, talking about in the taverns. I wonder if there is one, or if I should try to do one?
When the religious bigots in his Berkshire hill-town of 1800 people tried to ruin his business, Dr. Charles Knowlton called the town to a meeting and made a long speech about belief, morality and politics. The year was 1833: Knowlton had published his Fruits of Philosophy the year before, and was using it with his patients in Franklin county.
“He that will not reason is a bigot, he that cannot reason is a fool, and he that dares not reason is a slave!” Knowlton announced to his neighbors.
“I proceed—
“There are no changes, no events, in a word, no effects without causes, and one effect as necessarily follows its cause as another, whether it occur within a man’s head or without. Every feeling of man, every thought of his brain, as necessarily has its cause as the movement of a water-wheel; and we all as necessarily think as we do think, as rocks unsupported fall to the ground. To admit that a man may think as he has a mind to, is not to admit one whit against what I have now advanced. To have a mind to think so and so, is but to have thoughts and ideas that you will think so and so,—every one of which thoughts or ideas must and does have its cause; which cause, whatever it may be, is but the effect of a prior cause, and this, again, the effect of a still prior cause, and so on throughout the eternal chain of events.”
“All those changes within a man’s head, called intellectual operations, such as remembering, judging, belief, &c. consist entirely of sensorial actions, called thoughts or ideas, which follow one after another, and every one of which has its cause.” (text of the speech as reported by Knowlton here)
The philosophy behind Knowlton’s ideas is remarkably like the 20th-century psychology of behaviorism. Knowlton had published a nearly 450-page book about his theories, called Modern Materialism, in 1829.
The crux of Knowlton’s argument to his neighbors is that freedom of opinion is the basis of American society. Knowlton’s grandfather and father had fought in the Revolution; it was still a recent event. Knowlton asked the townspeople to judge him by his behavior, not his beliefs. He subtly but unmistakably suggests that those who want to judge people by their beliefs rather than their actions (the minister and his friends) choose this because they know their actions will not stand close scrutiny. His charge against the church was dramatically proven when the congregation excommunicated a long-time member who stood up to the minister and supported his friend and doctor, Knowlton. The church was divided over the issue, and the minister was ultimately forced to resign.
The things that really strike me about Knowlton’s speech are the modernity of the argument, and the generally high level of its language and ideas. Knowlton was clearly an odd man, but he had some experience in public speaking. He was probably pitching his argument appropriately for his audience, which suggests they were an intelligent and well-read crowd. This is especially interesting, as most of them were back-country farmers and sheep-herders. An intellectual history of regular people might help me get a better idea of what these people were reading, thinking, talking about in the taverns. I wonder if there is one, or if I should try to do one?
Hawley
01/24/2009 14:02
Hahvud
01/20/2009 23:08
Drove down to Harvard today, to look at the Norman Himes papers at the Countway Medical Library Special Collections. The Library isn’t in Cambridge, it’s in Boston on Shattuck Street, between about five hospitals. Oddly, I was just reading an 1811 letter from Nathan Smith to Dr. George Shattuck last night. The reading room I was in was called Holmes Hall, which I assume is for Oliver Wendell Holmes, but I didn’t ask. It’s a nice, wood-paneled room, lined on three sides with books. Not ancient medical texts, but lots of reference books: Who was who, National Biography, that sort of thing. The entire wall behind the librarian’s desk was a card catalog. Luckily, I didn’t have to use it. They had a nicely-bound finding aid that had been typed up by someone on a grant from Ortho Pharmaceuticals in 1973. That was about the time Mary Lee Esty was writing her biographical essay on Knowlton for them, too.
The archive has 133 boxes of Himes papers. I asked for four, and they appeared in minutes. There was no one else there today, though. Maybe it’s still break at Harvard. Or everybody was out watching the inauguration. The notes Himes took on Knowlton didn’t reveal any major secrets. There was a copyright date for the first edition of the Fruits of Philosophy in Rhode Island, which supports the story that Knowlton spent some time there in 1831. But the majority of the notes covered things I’ve already learned at Ashfield, Deerfield or online. It’s a lot easier, now that I can find all the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal articles on Google Books.
In the future, my research trips will probably be more focused on primary sources. I really need to read all the Boston Investigators from the 1830s, while Kneeland was in Boston. And I have to find out where Knowlton appeared and spoke at Free Enquirers’ conventions and meetings. I suspect he did a lot more of that than even Himes suspected. One interesting connection, that Laura Lovett at UMass suggested to me last fall, is that Himes was researching connections between the birth control movement and eugenics. I don’t think it went back to the 1830s, but the utopians like Owen and Wright may have contributed ideas to the early eugenicists, even if they weren’t thinking along those lines themselves. Maybe a topic for a paper someday.
The archive has 133 boxes of Himes papers. I asked for four, and they appeared in minutes. There was no one else there today, though. Maybe it’s still break at Harvard. Or everybody was out watching the inauguration. The notes Himes took on Knowlton didn’t reveal any major secrets. There was a copyright date for the first edition of the Fruits of Philosophy in Rhode Island, which supports the story that Knowlton spent some time there in 1831. But the majority of the notes covered things I’ve already learned at Ashfield, Deerfield or online. It’s a lot easier, now that I can find all the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal articles on Google Books.
In the future, my research trips will probably be more focused on primary sources. I really need to read all the Boston Investigators from the 1830s, while Kneeland was in Boston. And I have to find out where Knowlton appeared and spoke at Free Enquirers’ conventions and meetings. I suspect he did a lot more of that than even Himes suspected. One interesting connection, that Laura Lovett at UMass suggested to me last fall, is that Himes was researching connections between the birth control movement and eugenics. I don’t think it went back to the 1830s, but the utopians like Owen and Wright may have contributed ideas to the early eugenicists, even if they weren’t thinking along those lines themselves. Maybe a topic for a paper someday.
