Tag: founding fathers

Thomas Jefferson: A man interested in everything

September 9th, 2022

From Friends Divided: John Adams and Thomas Jefferson.

Two solid paragraphs from Gordon S. Wood on Thomas Jefferson’s endless curiosity.

He was interested in more things and knew about more things than any other American. When he was abroad he traveled to more varied places in Europe than Adam’s ever did, and kept a detailed record of all that he had seen, especially of the many vineyards he visited.
Wood, Gordon S. Friends Divided: John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. New York: Penguin Press, 2017. pg. 10

Not sure how one measures that Jefferson was interested in more things, and knew more things than any other American, but I trust Mr. Wood here. Also, Jefferson’s record keeping is legendary.

He amassed nearly seven thousand books and consulted them constantly; he wanted both his library and his mind to embrace virtually all of human knowledge, and he came as close to that embrace as an eighteenth century American could. Every aspect of natural history and science fascinated him.
Wood, Gordon S. Friends Divided: John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. New York: Penguin Press, 2017. pg. 10, 11

It wasn’t enough that Thomas Jefferson owned seven thousand books. He consulted them regularly.

He knew about flowers, plants, birds, and animals, and he had a passion for all facets of agriculture. He had a fascination for meteorology, archaeology, and the origins of the American Indians. He loved mathematics and sought to apply mathematical principles to almost everything, from coinage and weights and measures to the frequency of rebellions and the length of people’s lives. He was an inveterate tinkerer and inventor and was constantly thinking of newer and better ways of doing things, whether it was plowing, the copying of handwriting, or measuring distances.
Wood, Gordon S. Friends Divided: John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. New York: Penguin Press, 2017. pg. 11

It’s hard to think of any modern, public person, with Jefferson’s insatiable appetite for “all of human knowledge”.
Benjamin Rush’s commonplace book practice pt.2

August 3rd, 2022

In part 1, we learned Dr. Benjamin Rush was a devoted keeper of the commonplace book. In his book Rush: Revolution, Madness, and Benjamin Rush, the Visionary Doctor Who Became a Founding Father, author Stephen Fried details how Dr. Rush kept his commonplace books. In it we learn Rush’s mentor, Samuel Davies, didn’t discourage Rush from taking notes, despite the suspicion of the practice at that time:

Under Davies’s instruction, Rush came to love taking notes: while he read, while he listened, sometimes even while he talked, a pen and inkwell were always handy. Other teachers discouraged this practice, believing that memorandum books caused “the destruction of memories.” But Rush felt strongly that recording facts, and even rewriting entire passages, was a creative process; instead of “producing an oblivion” of facts, “it imprints them more deeply in the memory.” So while he studied the philosophy of John Locke, he did it using Locke’s own preferred format for note-taking and knowledge-gathering, the “common place book” (or memorandum book).
Rush: Revolution, Madness, and Benjamin Rush, the Visionary Doctor Who Became a Founding Father, by Stephen Fried, pg 25,26

Rush’s dedication to his commonplace book was relentless. At times, he’d rewrite entire commonplace books to make room for capturing new ideas. Rush was an intellectual bonfire!

Rush habitually wrote only on the right-hand of the page of his commonplace books, so he would always have room to reread and add additional ideas. And then when he filled many left-hand pages, he would sometimes rewrite the commonplace books all over again, leaving new blank pages.
Rush: Revolution, Madness, and Benjamin Rush, the Visionary Doctor Who Became a Founding Father, by Stephen Fried, pg 26

Rush was somewhat of a late bloomer in the medicine game. His commonplace book practice would help him catch up:

Between his formal education and his voracious reading, Rush had studied almost everything but science and medicine; now he was trying to learn everything from scratch. Besides taking in the principles of “modern medicine, he learned at Dr. Redman’s side how to compound treatments, how to perform bloodletting, cupping, and blistering, and how to deliver a baby. He also learned how to keep the accounting books for Redman’s huge practice. In all his other waking hours, Rush read the medical books he was discovering and the literature he loved. And he took voluminous notes on both in his commonplace books.
Rush: Revolution, Madness, and Benjamin Rush, the Visionary Doctor Who Became a Founding Father, by Stephen Fried, pg 33

These passages are further examples of the power of a commonplace book.
Benjamin Rush’s commonplace book practice pt.1

July 9th, 2022

From The Art of Manliness podcast:

The founding fathers had a general physician. His name? Benjamin Rush. The name sounded familiar, but truth is I knew nothing about him. But after an introduction from Brett McKay and Stephen Fried, I wasn’t surprised to learn he kept a commonplace book.

Brett McKay: Even the founding fathers did it. Something that really… You really hit home. And it really impressed me about Rush. Ever since he was a child, very curious, this self-starter, and something that he did that a lot of young upstarts did back in 17th century, 18th century, is he had a common place book and the guy just wrote down everything. How did that mental habit shape him for the rest of his life?
Stephen Fried: He did. And you know, what’s interesting, I found… I had the same question you had, and then I looked into it and I saw that even then there’s apparently a debate about how memory works. Of course, we’re still debating that, and the debate was, do you take notes and that makes you remember, or do you listen and not take notes, and that makes you remember? Most of Rush’s teachers thought you shouldn’t take notes, but Rush took notes. And so, what’s wonderful was after a certain point, we have them. I mean, a lot of things that Rush wrote are gone, I’m still hoping they will bubble up somewhere, but his commonplace books are wonderful. And part of the value of them is, of course, he did it when he was a kid, he did it when he was a student, and then when he was in the Continental Congress, he kept them about what it was like to be in the Continental Congress.
He would write little sketches about what he thought about the people in the Continental Congress, no holds bar. So he just… He wrote a lot, and so we have a lot of it, and we’re missing a lot of it, but everything we have is… What’s really nice about it also is that he wasn’t a formal writer. So he wrote in a style that we would today think of as almost like magazine writing. And it’s part of the reason that he was such an accessible intellectual and such an accessible writer is because, his writing style and of course, his penmanship were really readable, and when you read them today, they seem quite contemporary.
The AOM Podcast #813: The Fascinating Life of America’s Forgotten Founding Father. Brett McKay and Stephen Fried

Listen to the interview in its entirety below:

Tag: founding fathers

Thomas Jefferson: A man interested in everything

Benjamin Rush’s commonplace book practice pt.2

Benjamin Rush’s commonplace book practice pt.1