The controversy over the nature of electricity, conducted in the middle of the eighteenth century by Jean Antoine Nollet and supporters of Benjamin Franklin, is used to investigate the extent to which Catholic and Protestant faith played a role in discourse in the realm of natural philosophy. Catholic Nollet and Protestant Franklin shared a number of attributes, but the delight in controversy was not one of them.
Benjamin Franklin; Jean Antoine Nollet; Max Weber; Protestant ethic; religion and science; Enlightenment