How is Priestley related to todays ecosystem science?
The discovery of plant respiration is now seen as one of the founding insights that ecosystem science is based on, but Priestley also played a key role in teasing out the energy flows of photosynthesis, and published an influential paper on the way animals use oxygen as an energy source via the bloodstream. Priestley helped sketch out the first draft of the cycle of life on Earth: plants convert the energy of light into chemical energy, releasing oxygen into the atmosphere and absorbing carbon dioxide; animals power themselves through the energy stored in plant tissue and oxygen itself, releasing carbon dioxide as a waste product. How was he supported in his endeavors? And how was that support linked in a hidden way to the scientific discoveries he was making? At various points in his life, Priestley drew a salary as a minister and a teacher, but he was also supported by a series of patrons, most notably Lord Shelburne, on whose estate he worked for most of the 1770s, and then the exte
