An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump

Julia Forest

Copy Editor

On September 10th, Professors Toby Norris, Ben Knurr, and Jeremy Geddert came together to speak about Joseph Wright of Derby’s 1768 painting “An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump” in a lecture titled “Discover Nature’s Secrets.” The discussion was moderated by English Professor Rachel Ramsey.

Dean Lee Trepanier opened the inaugural event of the Foundations Lecture Series to a full audience in Curtis Performance Hall. “This lecture brings together faculty from different disciplines to examine and discuss a common idea or theme, showcasing the interconnectedness of knowledge and modeling the virtues of a lifelong curiosity about the world around us. These public discussions highlight the need and relevance of a Catholic liberal arts education, one rooted in the foundation of the shared knowledge and enhanced by specialized study,” Trepanier said.

Professor Norris, who teaches Art History, began the discussion by talking about the life and historical significance of Joseph Wright of Derby. “…he was living and working in the second half of the 1700s. That’s to say, the moment at which the scientific revolution was feeding into the industrial revolution in England,” Norris said.

“…he was born in Derby, but he also lived and worked for most of his career in Derby. And that’s unusual because typically, if you were an ambitious artist, and Joseph Wright was an ambitious artist, you would end up moving to London. Like a lot of places, there’s this powerful magnetic appeal to go live in the capital city, but Joseph Wright of Derby chose not to and that’s why everybody called him Joseph Wright of Derby,” he continued.

Throughout Derby’s career, he painted a wide variety of paintings, including many portraits and some landscape paintings.  “…we have just a handful of paintings by him that represent scenes of the Industrial Revolution…And these paintings get a lot of attention from art historians and historians because most artists thought that factories were ugly and they didn’t want to paint paintings of them. Joseph Wright of Derby did choose to paint a few of them and they’ve become a really big part of his reputation. So, in one sense he’s thought of as the artist of the industrial revolution. Or for tonight, we would say the artist of the scientific and industrial revolutions,” Norris said.

“Three Persons Viewing the Gladiator by Candlelight,” “A Philosopher Giving that Lecture on an Orrery, in which a Lamp is put in the Place of the Sun,” and “An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump” were a series of three of Derby’s paintings that built his reputation. “He kind of made a name for himself painting nighttime scenes lit by candlelight or lamp light… As he went from painting to painting in this series of three, he got bigger. And when an artist paints a big painting, it usually means that they’re expecting to make a bit of a splash with it,” he said.

Knurr, Professor of Chemistry, analyzed the science experiment that is displayed in the painting. “The experiment he’s referencing is an experiment on using air pumps by Robert Boyle. Robert Boyle’s experiment was originally done way back in 1659. So, the painting is of an experiment over 100 years after the original experiment was done.”

Knurr explained that one of Boyle’s air pump experiments involved “sucking the air out of a bird in a glass bowl and watching the bird die,” which is depicted in the painting.

He then described how the air pump worked in the 1700s.  “…the principle is still the same, of this expansion and contraction of gas to move gas through a system. So a couple things here, you need some oil to lubricate things, you probably needed to keep running it, so this experiment, some poor person is sitting there like constantly turning the crank to keep it going. And by modern standards, this would have only achieved low vacuum conditions but to damage a bird, it was plenty,” Knurr said.

“In the original experiment, I’m pretty sure they killed the bird because they sucked the air out and you didn’t know what was going to happen to the bird and the bird died. However, a hundred years later, this is now a commercialized version of the experiment… so they could bring the bird to near death and then let the bird come back to life,” he said.

Professor Geddert, who teaches Political Science, focused on how this painting demonstrates the use of the scientific method and the historical change of how science became available to everyone in Britain. “Science should not start from the top down, but from the bottom up. You don’t have to understand the whole. You don’t have to understand why it works in order to understand how a particular part works. You only need a method by which ordinary people can participate in the pursuit of scientific truth,” Geddert said.

Geddert explained that Francis Bacon, a British philosopher, changed the way people viewed science. “For Bacon, he says, you have to stop deferring to nature, treating it with a kind of awe or reverence or wonder, as though it were an Oxford Chancellor or an English monarch. Instead, Bacon says, you have to go out and wrestle with it. And you have to win. You have to take control of it…So you examine nature almost like putting it on trial. You treat it as kind of a defendant in hopes that it will yield up its secrets,” he said.

“Coming back to our painting, the painting isn’t just about the method, it’s not just about the doing of science. It’s about how the lab can be brought to everybody, even to schoolchildren. And note that the teacher here doesn’t have to be an expert. He can just be a traveling salesman because any person can understand this. All you have to do is to have the right kind of method,” Geddert continued.

Wright’s painting celebrates an increase of education and knowledge amongst all ages and everyday people. “The combination of British organized conflict over the years, the back and forth, and the idea of British power to the people helped to enable the method of experimentation that we see here. And it’s a method that makes knowledge available to the masses. And so this idea of taking control of nature frees knowledge from the philosophical gatekeepers and is able to spread this light of enlightenment to all people.”