Description
Book SynopsisThis debate, Fox argues, became a contest for the hearts and minds of the French citizenry.
Trade ReviewIn writing a history of science and cultural politics in nineteenth-century France, Fox has achieved a formidable and admirable synthesis. -- Mary Jo Nye Metascience Such a bold undertaking would flounder in the hands of anyone not possessed of superior scholarship and decades of experience. Savant and the State could have been written by no one other than Robert Fox. -- Clifford Cunningham Sun News Network A skilful balance between speculative and thought-provoking thematic work and accounts of the specific, the confined, and the material... Brilliant and well-researched. -- Sophie Waring British Journal for the History of Science This work should be of inestimable value to all historians of science, France, and European culture. -- Martin S. Staum American Historical Review A valuable synthesis of the variety of political and cultural roles played by the scientific enterprise in France from the end of the First Empire to the outbreak of World War I... A broad-ranging, balanced survey of the state of the field... In The Savant and the State, Fox has written what is likely to remain the definitive survey of public science in nineteenth-century France for some time to come. -- Alex Csiszar Journal of Modern History
Table of ContentsPreface
Introduction
1. Science and the New Order
The Return of the Bourbons
Patronage, Authority, and the Profession of Science
Science and the Industrial Age
A Philosophy for the Times: The Roots of Positivism
2. Voices on the Periphery
Academies and Societies
The Devotee: Nature, Learning, and Locality
Science and Decentralization
The Triumph of the Center
3. Science, Bureaucracy, and the Empire
The Trials of Academic Science
Education, Industry, and the Imperial State
The Bureaucracy of Learning
The Roots of Academic Reform
4. Science, Philosophy, and the Culture of Secularism
The Midcentury: Conformity and Dissent in French Philosophy
The Nature of Life: Pasteur–Pouchet Revisited
The Radical Synthesis and Its Enemies
A Faith for the Age: The Religion of Humanity
5. Science for All
Fashioning the Audience
Masters of the Mass Market: Flammarion and Figuier
The Spoken Word
Broader Audiences, Bigger Stakes
6. The Public Face of Republican Science
The Savant at War and Peace
Countercurrents: Science in the Catholic Tradition
The Republic of the Savants
Fin de Siècle: From Inspiration to Anxiety
Conclusion
Appendix A: The French System of Education and Research
Appendix B: Exchange Rates and Incomes in Nineteenth-Century France
Abbreviations
Notes
Bibliographical Note
Index
