Description
Book SynopsisBy the end of the eighteenth century, the French dominated the world of science. And although science and politics had little to do with each other directly, there were increasingly frequent intersections. This is a study of those transactions between science and state, knowledge and power - on the eve of the French Revolution.
Trade ReviewWinner of the Pfizer Award,History of Science Society "[A] learned and absorbing book... In both conception and execution, it is a work on the grand scale."--Nature "This is an authoritative book by one of our leading historians of science... Written in a stately style and rich in archival and documentary evidence, it will be a source of pleasure and profit to students of French science for many years to come."--Science "An enormously elaborate interweaving of many threads of detail, political, scientific, personal... Its expression is fluent and vivid. It is a very scholarly book, but it is no arid presentation of past events, it is alive... This is history as it is rarely written, and the book is wonderful."--Quarterly Review of Biology
Table of Contents*FrontMatter, pg. i*Contents, pg. vii*Preface, pg. ix*A Note on the Citations, pg. xi*Chapter I. The State And Science, pg. 3*Chapter II. Science and the State, pg. 74*Chapter III. Science and Medicine, pg. 187*CHAPTER IV. Scientists and Charlatans, pg. 257*CHAPTER V. Trades and Agriculture, pg. 335*CHAPTER VI. Industry and Invention, pg. 388*CHAPTER VII. Engineering, Civil and Military, pg. 479*Conclusion, pg. 549*Bibliography, pg. 553*Index, pg. 579
