The Playful Genius: What You Can Learn from Ben Franklin's Revolutionary Approach to Discovery

Richard Munson shares 5 key insights from Ingenious: A Biography of Benjamin Franklin, Scientist.

Benjamin Franklin was a lot of things: statesman, diplomat, inventor, printer, postmaster, Founding Father, and legendary wit. But at his core, he was a scientist—an insatiably curious explorer who approached the world with wonder and a mischievous experimental spirit. In Ingenious: A Biography of Benjamin Franklin, Scientist, Richard Munson peels back the layers of Franklin's public persona to reveal a brilliant mind driven by an unquenchable thirst for understanding. Richard has been the director of the Environmental Defense Fund, a senior vice president at Recycled Energy Development, coordinator of the bipartisan Northeast-Midwest Congressional Coalition, and has written several biographies of innovators. Readers of his new book will discover not just the fascinating details of Franklin's scientific adventures, but also timeless lessons about curiosity, humility, and the joy of discovery that are as relevant today as they were in the 18th century. Here’s Richard to share what we can all learn from Ben:

The 5 Key Insights

1. Embrace curiosity.

2. Revel in discovery.

3. Keep an open mind.

4. Give credit.

5. Maintain humor.

1. Embrace curiosity.

Rarely satisfied with conventional wisdom, let alone dogma, Benjamin Franklin literally chased after nature. On a horse ride one afternoon, his friends spotted a small whirlwind that was beginning to raise dust. In the key line of his writing that day, Franklin declared, “The rest of the company stood looking after (the whirlwind), but my curiosity being stronger, I followed it.”

Referring to “a common opinion that a shot fired through a waterspout will break it,” he used his whip frequently against the whirlwind, but to no effect. Several years later, England’s Royal Society printed Franklin’s notes and obser¬vations about these whirlwinds on land and waterspouts at sea. James Cook, the British explorer, commended Franklin for “the most ratio-nal account I have read of [these large eddies].”

2. Revel in discovery.

Benjamin’s notes reveal a refreshing inquisitiveness and are filled with expressions of happy discovery. “It is amazing to observe”; the “experiment more than surprises us” and the results “appear more surprising.” Reflecting on the unforeseen thrills associated with his tests, Franklin wrote: “Though we miss what we expected to find, yet something valuable turns out, something surprising and instructing though unthought of.”

3. Keep an open mind.

Franklin’s laboratory notes displayed humbleness. He warned a colleague, for instance, that his writings might “bring you nothing new, which may well be.” And he admitted what he didn’t know, including, “I am very little acquainted with the nature of magnetism,” and “I am much in the dark about light.”

“Franklin’s laboratory notes displayed humbleness.”

Franklin argued a scientist must be willing to question his own theories and tolerate challenges from others. “I must own [when] what I have some doubts about [my own hypotheses],” he admitted, “yet, as I have at present nothing better to offer in their stead, I do no cross them out; for even a bad solution read, and its faults discovered, has often given rise to a good one in the mind of an ingenious reader.” Part of practicing science, he observed, is to construct “many pretty systems” that we “soon find ourselves obliged to destroy.”

4. Give credit.

Franklin regularly applauded his clever and crafty colleagues, and most of his experiment descriptions referred to “we” or “us.” When Franklin’s role was challenged later by his political opponents, his team members responded that Franklin had the “undoubted right” to all the honors he received. One partner added that no one should “deprecate the merit of the ingenious and worthy Mr. Franklin in the many curious and justly celebrated discoveries he has made [in electricity].”

Franklin encouraged others to build on his “short hints and imperfect experiments” and to obtain “more complete discoveries,” and suggested even imperfect experiments “have oftentimes a good effect, in exciting the attention of the ingenious to the subject and so become the occasion of more [exact disquisition and more] complete discoveries.”

5. Maintain humor.

Franklin captured public attention in part because he conducted understandable (even fun) experiments: who could not comprehend flying a kite? Yet adding to his popular appeal, he hid his brilliance behind a trickster’s sense of fun. As an example, he placed a slight electric charge along the metal fence surrounding his Philadelphia home so visitors would get to experience electricity directly. He even proposed a “party of pleasure” on the banks of the Schuylkill to which electrical charges cooked the meals and ran through the river to ignite alcoholic spirits on the opposite bank.