Science and Polity in France

by Gillispie, Charles Coulston

• ISBN13: 9780691115412
• ISBN10: 0691115419
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2004-07-06
• Publisher: Princeton Univ Pr

Summary

From the 1770s through the 1820s the French scientific community predominated in the world to a degree that no other scientific establishment did in any period prior to the Second World War. In his classicScience and Polity in France: The End of the Old Regime, Charles Gillispie analyzed the cultural, political, and technical factors that encouraged scientific productivity on the eve of the Revolution. In the present monumental and elegantly written sequel to that work, which Princeton is reissuing concurrently, he examines how the revolutionary and Napoleonic context contributed to modernization both of politics and science. In politics, argues Gillispie, the central feature of this modernization was conversion of subjects of a monarchy into citizens of a republic in direct contact with a state enormously augmented in power. To the scientific community, attainment of professional status was what citizenship was to all Frenchmen in the republic proper, namely the license to self-governance and dignity within the respective contexts. Revolutionary circumstances set up a resonance between politics and science since practitioners of both were future oriented in their outlook and scornful of the past. Among the creations of the First French Republic were institutions providing the earliest higher education in science. From them emerged rigorously trained people who constituted the founding generation in the disciplines of mathematical physics, positivistic biology, and clinical medicine. That scientists were able to achieve their ends was owing to the expertise they provided the revolutionary and imperial authorities in education, medicine, warfare, empire building, and industrial technology.

Table of Contents

ABBREVIATIONS	ix
Introduction	1	(6)
CHAPTER I. Science and Politics under the Constituent Assembly	7	(94)
1. Science and Politics in 1789	7	(8)
2. Bailly and the Constituent Assembly	15	(10)
3. Lavoisier and the Arsenal	25	(11)
4. Vicq d'Azyr and the Reform of Medicine	36	(20)
5. Condorcet and Truth in Politics	56	(11)
6. Condorcet, Bailly, and the Governance of Paris	67	(11)
7. Political Economy	78	(18)
8. Varennes and the Champ-de-Mars	96	(5)
CHAPTER II. Education, Science, and Politics	101	(64)
1. Scientists in the Legislative Assembly	101	(9)
2. The Condorcet Plan for National Education	110	(14)
3. Talleyrand's Educational Proposal	124	(5)
4. The Educational Legacy of the Old Regime	129	(7)
5. The Political Setting	136	(4)
6. The Convention	140	(6)
7. Education and Science	146	(19)
CHAPTER III. The Museum of Natural History and the Academy of Science: Rise and Fall	165	(58)
1. Natural History and Theoretical Science	165	(2)
2. The Museum d'Histoire Naturelle	167	(17)
3. The Academy of Science in the Revolutionary Climate	184	(11)
4. Artisans and Inventors	195	(15)
5. The Last Year of the Academy	210	(13)
CHAPTER IV. The Metric System	223	(63)
1. Background	223	(12)
2. Proposals	235	(15)
3. Methods and Instruments	250	(8)
4. Operations in the Field	258	(20)
5. The Provisional Meter	278	(8)
CHAPTER V. Science and the Terror	286	(53)
1. Terror amd Expropriation	286	(7)
2. The Republican Calendar	293	(5)
3. The Observatory of Paris	298	(8)
4. The College de France	306	(5)
5. Individual Destinies	311	(15)
6. The Calvary of Condorcet	326	(13)
CHAPTER VI. Scientists at War	339	(106)
1. The Monge Connection	339	(19)
2. Weaponry	358	(23)
3. The Mobilization of Scientists	381	(16)
4. Munitions and Guns	397	(31)
5. Inventions	428	(5)
6. Natural History and Conquest	433	(11)
7. Effects of Wartime: Science and the State	444	(1)
CHAPTER VII. Thermidorean Convention and Directory	445	(106)
1. Institutionalization of French Science, 1794-1804	445	(1)
2. Institut de France, Museum d'Histoire Naturelle, and Bureau des Longitudes	446	(12)
3. Completion of the Metric System	458	(36)
4. The École Normale de l'an III	494	(26)
5. The École Polytechnique	520	(20)
6. The École de Sante and Clinical Medicine	540	(11)
CHAPTER VIII. Bonaparte and the Scientific Community	551	(101)
1. Monge in Italy, 1796-1798	551	(6)
2. The Egyptian Expedition	557	(43)
3. The Ideologues and 18 Brumaire	600	(11)
4. The Consulate, 1799-1804	611	(29)
5. Napoleon and Science	640	(12)
CHAPTER IX. Positivist Science	652	(45)
1. Discipline Formation	652	(3)
2. Comparative Anatomy	655	(7)
3. Experimental Physiology	662	(13)
4. Mathematical Physics	675	(19)
5. Conclusion	694	(3)
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS	697	(2)
BIBLIOGRAPHY	699	(18)
INDEX	717