Priestley, Joseph (1733–1804)

A major figure of the British Enlightenment, Joseph Priestley is best known as a scientist and for his discovery of oxygen, though he was by profession a theologian, and also wrote on politics and education – more, indeed, than on science or metaphysics. His philosophical speculations were generally brought to support his theological arguments and were usually structured in a rhetorical rather than in a formal, systematic mode. He was a Unitarian in theology, an associationist, determinist and monist, with a curiously spiritualized materialism dependent, in part at least, on his scientific studies.