[2] January 16 - The French Revolution, the idéologues, and the sciences
Section outline
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In this session we treat the vexed question of the relationship between science and politics in the age of the nation-state, beginning with the French Revolution. As early as April 1793 chemist Antoine Fourcroy sought to align the history of the natural sciences with the advancement of the French Republic: "France still retains the superiority that no other nation has so far refused her, and even since their glorious revolution, French savants have pushed back the limits of the human spirit more than the peoples bordering the Republic have done." How did the sciences contribute to the vaunting universalism of French revolutionary politics?
Since the French case becomes a reference point for all the others in the course of the nineteenth century, and because many French scientists attained positions of influence during the French Republic and Empire, I have prepared an introductory lecture to set the scene.
Assigned reading:
Francis William Blagdon, "Letter XXXIV," Paris As It Was and As It Is: or, A sketch of the French Capital, Illustrative of the Effects of the Revolution, with Respect to Sciences, Literature, Arts, Religion, Education, Manners, and Amusements; Comprising also a Correct Account of the Most Remarkable National Establishments and Public Buildings (1803), 391-397.
Patrice Higgonet, "Capital of science," Paris: Capital of the World (2002), 121-148.
French option: François (de Neufchâteau), "[Discours prononcé par François de Neufchâteau à l'ouverture de l'exposition des produits de l'industrie française]," Gazette nationale, ou le moniteur universel (1er Vendémiaire an 7 [1798]), 2. (Cf. transcription.)
German option: Johann Gottfried Schmeisser, "Vorrede," Beyträge zur näheren Kenntniß des gegenwärtigen Zustandes der Wissenschaften in Frankreich, vol. 1 (1797) v-xii.
Polish option: Roman Markiewicz, Paryż uważany co do nauk (1811).
Hungarian option: Kis János, “Mi segíti elő a tudományok és szép mesterségek virágzását?” Felső Magyar Országi Minerva 2, no. 4 (April 1825): 135–37.
Russian option: A. G. Glagolev, Записки русского путешественника А. Глаголева, с 1823 по 1827 год, vol. 4. (1837), 57-66.Suggested reading:
Maurice Crosland, “History of Science in a National Context,” British Journal for the History of Science 10, no. 2 (1977): 95–113.Maurice Crosland, The Society of Arcueil: A View of French Science at the Time of Napoleon I (1967).Robert Fox, The Savant and the State: Science and Cultural Politics in Nineteenth-Century France (2012).Robert Fox, The Culture of Science in France, 1700-1900 (1992).Dorinda Outram, Georges Cuvier: Vocation, Science, and Authority in Post-Revolutionary France (1984).Ludmilla Jordanova, “Science and Nationhood: Cultures of Imagined Communities.” In Imagining Nations (1998), edited by Geoffrey Cubitt, 192–211.George Lichtheim, “The Concept of Ideology” History and Theory 4, no. 2 (1965): 164–95.Matthew G. Adkins, “The Renaissance of Peiresc: Aubin-Louis Millin and the Postrevolutionary Republic of Letters,” Isis 99, no. 4 (2008): 675–700.Carol E. Harrison and Ann Johnson, “Introduction: Science and National Identity,” Osiris 24 (2009): 1–14.Carol E. Harrison, “Projections of the Revolutionary Nation: French Expeditions in the Pacific, 1791–1803,” Osiris 24 (2009): 33–52.L. Pearce Williams, “Science, Education and the French Revolution,” Isis 44, no. 4 (1953): 311–30.
Michel Serres, "Paris 1800," in Éléments d'histoire des sciences (1989), 337-361.
Keith Michael Baker, "Science and politics at the end of the Old Regime," Inventing the French Revolution: Essays on French Political Culture in the Eighteenth Century (1990), 153-166.Jessica Riskin, “Rival Idioms for a Revolutionized Science and a Republican Citizenry,” Isis 89, no. 2 (1998): 203–32.John Gascoigne, "The scientist as patron and patriotic symbol: The changing reputation of Sir Joseph Banks," in Telling Lives in Science: Essays on Scientific Biography, Shortland and Yeo, eds. (1996), 244-.Joseph Ben-David, "The rise and decline of France as a scientific centre," Minerva 2 (1970): 160-179.See also Adolphe Wurtz's famous polemic ("Chemistry is a French science."), Histoire des doctrines chimiques depuis Lavoisier jusqu'à nos jours (1868), best understood in combination with next week's session. (English, German, Polish; also translated by Butlerov into Russian) -