Dr. Robert Allison
speaker
326 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Jul 2026
last heard 3 Jul
Dr. Robert Allison’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.
Appearances
So, yes, there is a change.
It's hard to believe that people might, their perspectives on how the world works might be tinged by their political leanings.
That's true, yeah.
There were.
In fact, Franklin, he's in Paris, and he reads an account of a British natural philosopher who is arguing that Franklin is all wrong, that the lightning rod should have a round point.
This guy says, no, they should have a straight point.
And Franklin thinks, well, this is a scientific argument.
Maybe I should write in defense of the round point.
But then he thinks, well, why?
Because if the other one works better, why am I trying to defend something that doesn't work?
Let people experiment.
So there are many different ideas about this.
I mentioned Descartes thinking that vortices hold things up.
The Newtonians believe, though, that gravity is this unifying thing that pulls things together.
And the French officially are very much committed to the Descartian idea.
And the reason Franklin's experiment is carried out in Paris is there's a French natural philosopher who wants to prove the Descartian's wrong, including the guy who is the royal experimenter for the king.
So there is not only let's prove this wrong, but there's a certain petty jealousy among these characters.
Thomas Paine, and by the way, Thomas Paine also has a patent.
He's developed a
a suspension bridge or a piling bridge, but that's a story for another day, that we have it in our power to begin the world over again.
Showing 281–300 of 326 · page 15 of 17
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