Henry Cavendish publishes his paper "On Factitious Airs". This is generally credited to show the discovery of hydrogen, since it describes the density of 'inflammable air', which formed water on combustion.
If science weren't by far the most dependable method for controlling the world that has ever been devised, then systems like the telephones, the internet or ATMs would be totally impossible, not to mention air travel, modern manufacturing, genetic engineering, the pharmaceutical industry, etc. etc..
Science is a process which involves describing and establishing facts about the world, and then, testing those facts to see if they are correct.
Science has established a huge number of facts about the world, far more than can be understood or learned by any one person.
The core of this paper around which many insights develop is that despite the limited exposure of science in the colonial press, the newspaper was integral to the development of an experimental science, itself integral to the burgeoning capitalist society of a pre-revolutionary, colonial America.
The connection to British science and the Royal Society is under less of a strain than in the later period.
Thus, science in the press followed market and governmental forms with a structure of specialization and representation which I term 'republican science,' a form of public science that continues today.
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