Things I don’t understand ||

Object lesson #2 in our occasional series on Wikipedia’s inability to write biographies is about American philosopher, writer and Revolutionary politician, Benjamin Franklin.

From the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, I reproduce the first few and last few paragraphs:

Franklin, Benjamin (1706–1790), natural philosopher, writer, and revolutionary politician in America, was born in Boston, Massachusetts, New England, on 6 January 1706 and baptized later that day. His parents were Josiah Franklin (1657–1745), a tallow chandler and soap maker who had emigrated from England in 1683 to practise his puritan faith, and his second wife, Abiah (1667–1752), the daughter of writeSeealsoLink(’/index/101074764/’, “Peter Folger”)Peter Folger of Nantucket Island, Massachusetts. Josiah had eighteen children, seven by his first wife and eleven by his second. Benjamin was the ninth child born to Josiah and Abiah.

Early years: Boston, Philadelphia, and London, 1706–1726

Franklin had only two years of formal education. He studied at a traditional grammar school (probably in 1714–15), and at an English school during the following year. He then worked for his father, but disliked the trade. In 1718 his brother James set up a printing shop in Boston. Since Franklin loved to read and write poetry his father apprenticed him to James, and in that year the twelve-year-old Franklin signed a nine-year indenture. After reading everything in his father’s small library he borrowed books from his friends. Having purchased an odd volume of The Spectator, Franklin taught himself composition by making notes on the essays, then jumbling the notes, and later constructing them in his own words. He compared these with the originals and corrected his.

In 1721 James Franklin started his own newspaper, the New England Courant, which became America’s first witty, daring, literary, and anti-establishment journal. To Benjamin his brother’s printing shop served as a miniature republic of letters where groups of James’s friends met daily to discuss the materials they were writing for the Courant. Benjamin set the contents in type, printed and delivered the journal to the customers, and heard their comments. At sixteen he emulated his brother’s friends and wrote for the paper, in what became the first essay series in American literature, under the pseudonym Silence Dogood:

But being still a Boy, and suspecting that my Brother would object to printing any Thing of mine in his Paper if he knew it to be mine, I contriv’d to disguise my Hand and writing an anonymous Paper I put it in at Night under the Door of the Printing-House. (Autobiography, 17–18)

Between 12 June and 7 July 1722 Benjamin took charge of the Courant while his brother served a prison term for suggesting that local officials had deliberately delayed sailing out to resist pirates. After James had further offended the authorities, in January 1723, the Massachusetts general assembly narrowly agreed to prohibit him from publishing the newspaper without prior review. James defied the order, printed the Courant, and hid from the authorities between 24 January and 12 February, leaving Benjamin once more in charge. In this capacity the adolescent gave ‘our Rulers some Rubs in it’ (ibid., 19).

…………

In May 1768 Franklin, as natural philosopher, had experimented on the relationship between canal water depths and the speed of canal boats. In July of that year he devised a phonetic alphabet and corresponded in it; in the autumn he had maps of the Atlantic engraved which contained the course of the ‘river in the ocean’, the gulf stream. Franklin also supervised publication of the revised and enlarged fourth English edition of his Experiments and Observations on Electricity (1769). In August 1772 the Académie Royale des Sciences in Paris elected him a foreign associate at a time when he was engaged in repeated experiments concerning the interaction of oil and water, correctly determining ‘the scale of magnitude of molecular dimensions, the first person ever to do so, but he did not recognize it’ (Tanford, 80).

And his reputation?

Reputation

During the 1730s Franklin became known as the most successful newspaperman and writer in the colonies. In the 1740s he was celebrated as Philadelphia’s most public-spirited citizen. He became the world’s best-known living scientist through his design, in 1744, of a stove more efficient than any previous one, and his proof in 1752 that lightning was electrical in nature. During the 1750s he also became the dominant Pennsylvania politician. From 1757 to 1764 and again from 1764 to 1775 he lived in England, where he was America’s spokesperson and unofficial ambassador. He was the best-known American before George Washington’s rise to prominence during the revolution. During the 1770s and 1780s he was famous as a revolutionary and then as a statesman. At his death in 1790 he was celebrated as a patriot and founding father, being the only person to sign all three fundamental documents of American statehood: the Declaration of Independence (1776), the peace treaty with Britain (1783), and the constitution of the United States (1787). His contemporaries often commented on his egalitarianism (Thomas Penn called him a ‘Tribune of the People’ in 1748; Papers, 3.186) and on his metaphysical scepticism (Condorcet thought him a Pyrrhonist). Throughout the latter part of his life he was renowned for his self-motivation. Without education he had become one of the most learned persons of his time. Without inherited money he had become wealthy. Without prospects as a young man he had become famous.

Five aspects of Franklin’s reputation endure. His standing as a public-spirited citizen has been kept alive by his Autobiography and by the institutions that he founded—among them the Library Company of Philadelphia, the American Philosophical Society, and the University of Pennsylvania. His reputation as a scientist is confirmed by the existence of every lightning rod. The best-known period of Franklin’s life, the French years (1777–85), authenticates his position as a statesman. David Hume’s 1763 description of Franklin as a ‘Great Man of Letters’ (Papers, 10.81) and the inclusion of his writings in almost all anthologies of American literature attest to his ability as a writer. The poverty and obscurity of his family background, coupled with his later fame as a scientist, statesman, and writer, continue to make Franklin the single most famous example of a self-made man.

Posthumously three major elements have been added to his reputation: materialist, philistine, and rake. The three supposed characteristics say more about later times and the naïvety of the writers than about Franklin. The popularity of The Way to Wealth (a name later given to the preface for the Poor Richard almanac of 1758) identified Franklin with getting and saving money. This aspect of Franklin’s posthumous reputation was reinforced by Max Weber’s influential identification of him with ‘The Spirit of Capitalism’ and by Franklin’s picture on the United States $100 bill. However, instead of spending his life in the acquisition of wealth, Franklin retired aged forty-one to produce ‘something for the common Benefit of Mankind’ (Papers, 3.317). He dedicated thousands of hours to public-spirited causes without expecting or receiving any material reward. He turned down a patent for his stove design which would have made him a fortune and he offered to pay for the tea dumped into the harbour at the Boston Tea Party, though to have done so would have impoverished him. Few men of any time were as idealistic as Franklin.

Arising in great part because of Franklin’s identification with materialism, but also because he belonged to no religious sect, the idea of Franklin as philistine, without idealism or spirituality, has been presented most forcefully in D. H. Lawrence’s characterization in his Studies in Classic American Literature (1923). Lawrence, like some other critics, identified Franklin as the embodiment of an acquisitive American culture. But, again, such judgements are misleading. Franklin wrote more about religion and virtue than any other colonial American layman. He contributed money to every religious society of Philadelphia. He devoted his time and money to more idealistic causes throughout his life than almost any of his contemporaries. Even in his will he tried to help the young artisans of Boston and Philadelphia.

Finally comparatively frank details of his interest in sex in the Autobiography, the knowledge that he had an illegitimate son, and a number of his risqué writings, such as ‘Old mistresses’ apologue’ and ‘The Elysian Fields’ have contributed to the idea of Franklin as a womanizer, a view that became increasingly popular during the twentieth century. But after he married Deborah Read, at the age of twenty-four, there is no evidence whatever that he had any other sexual relations. His affectionate lifelong relationships with several women in America, England, and France during his mature years bespeak, in many cases, delightful flirtation and, in all cases, devoted friendship.

Franklin’s reputation during his own lifetime was well founded. Besides dozens of general biographies numerous books are devoted to various aspects of Franklin—as businessman, economist, printer, postmaster, philosopher, politician, scientist, theologian, statesman, writer, private citizen, friend—and to numerous specialized topics within these and other general subjects. Franklin’s great ability and drive were exceeded only by his interests and achievements. Every study of Franklin must be selective and none can do him justice.

Perhaps Franklin would have wished to be remembered for his concern for the ‘common Good of Mankind’ (Papers, 9.229). He wanted to become an amicus humani generis. Numerous contemporaries thought he realized that ambition (Edmund Burke called him the ‘friend to mankind’; Correspondence, 4.419) . When thanked for aiding a stranger Franklin replied, on 6 June 1753: ‘the only Thanks I should desire is, that you would always be equally ready to serve any other Person that may need your Assistance, and so let good Offices go round, for Mankind are all of a Family’ (Papers, 4.504). Near the end of his life he wrote, ‘God grant, that not only the Love of Liberty, but a thorough Knowledge of the Rights of Man, may pervade all the Nations of the Earth, so that a Philosopher may set his Foot anywhere on its Surface, and say, “This is my Country”’ (Writings, ed. Smyth, 10.72).

J. A. Leo Lemay

Now compare writing like that to Wikipedia’s version.

Or better still, try to find all of the sentences in the Wikipedia biography which have been plagiarized from the Oxford DNB 

Example

Oxford DNB:

While Franklin was at sea the battles of Lexington and Concord (17 and 18 April 1775) started the War of American Independence. He arrived at Philadelphia on 5 May and on the following day the Pennsylvania assembly unanimously chose him as a delegate to the second continental congress.

Wikipedia:

By the time Franklin arrived in Philadelphia on May 5, the American Revolution had begun with fighting at Lexington and Concord. The New England militia had trapped the main British army in Boston. The Pennsylvania Assembly unanimously chose Franklin as their delegate to the Second Continental Congress.

Spooky, eh?