The Complete Works in Philosophy, Politics and Morals of the Late Dr. Benjamin Franklin, Vol. 2 [Of 3]

Benjamin Franklin was the original American好奇心 - a man who looked at a lightning strike and asked not if God was angry, but how the electricity moved. This second volume gathers his scientific and philosophical investigations, revealing a mind that refused to accept 'because' as an answer. Here is Franklin reasoning about air: its particles, its pressures, how water dissolves into it like salt into soup. Here too are his observations on whirlwinds and water-spouts, written with the same careful attention he brought to negotiating treaties with France. The prose has a delightful plainness - no jargon, no pretension, just a man thinking out loud about how the world works. Reading these pages is like sitting in a Philadelphia study as an old friend explains what he noticed today. Franklin writes with the confidence of someone who proved his theories with kites and keys, yet never loses the wonder that made him keep asking questions in the first place. For anyone curious about the mind that helped invent American democracy and American science, this is where that mind comes alive.