A More Perfect Copy: David Rittenhouse and the Reproduction of Republican Virtue

William Huntting Howell

IN his Notes on the State of Virginia—having disproved with a catalog of zoological weights and measures the comte de Buffon's hypothesis that the animals (including the native peoples) of the Americas were inferior to those of Europe—Thomas Jefferson turned his attention to the abbé de Raynal's equally serious charge against the "race of whites" in the New World: "'that America has not yet produced one good poet, one able mathematician, one man of genius in a single art or a single science.'" After commonplace invocations of George Washington ("whose memory will be adored while liberty shall have votaries") and Benjamin Franklin ("no one of the present age has made more important discoveries, nor has enriched philosophy with more, or more ingenious solutions of the phænomena of nature"), Jefferson offered up natural philosopher, instrument maker, and philomath David Rittenhouse. "We have supposed Mr. Rittenhouse second to no astronomer living: that in genius he must be the first, because he is selftaught. As an artist he has exhibited as great a proof of mechanical genius as the world has ever produced. He has not indeed made a world; but he has by imitation approached nearer its Maker than any man who has lived from the creation to this day."1	1
The remark fits easily into Jefferson's well-documented admiration of Rittenhouse and into the popular conception of the natural philosopher, who had gained wide notice as a designer and builder of orreries (Figure I). Rittenhouse's ability to manufacture miniature clockwork versions of the solar system indicated to Jefferson an analogical relationship with the great Creator of the actual universe. Within such lavish praise, however, lies one of the great paradoxes of republican personhood: for Jefferson, Rittenhouse's singular worth was predicated on the erasure of his singularity; though he exhibited a certain self-taught (or liberal) mastery or creativity, it was only by imitation that he approached his Maker. Indeed the astronomer's success seems to emerge from the suppression of anything like individuality, willfulness, or originary production: he is passive, impersonal, a vehicle for expressing the truths that inform the universe. In Jefferson's scheme Rittenhouse's artistry did not establish his own particularized greatness but rather exhibited a proof of the existence of mechanical genius more generally. Rittenhouse did not make a world because he ought not: the proper duty of the natural philosopher was to discover and translate the laws of nature and nature's God as accurately as possible—to limn a more perfect copy of the principles that govern the universe—not to create the world anew. In the case of the orrery, Rittenhouse's stated goal was simply to "astonish the skilful and curious examiner, by a most accurate correspondence between the situations and motions of ... those bodies, themselves."2	2
Figure I University of Pennsylvania orrery by David Rittenhouse. Courtesy, University of Pennsylvania Art Collection, Philadelphia.   . . . There are about 14328 more words in this article. Please log in (or, if you are not yet an authorized user, please go to the User Setup page) to gain full access rights. Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.