A company of scientists: botany, patronage, and community at the seventeenth-century Parisian Royal Academy of Sciences

What happened to wondrous phenomena during the European Enlightenment? A familiar answer is that the learned elites of the period, and especially those linked to the Royal Academy of Sciences in Paris, either ignored wonders or debunked them. Historians of science who have challenged this answer have so far paid little attention to one of the main sources of evidence usually invoked in its favor, namely the experimental reports of the chemist Charles Dufay (1698–1739). This paper considers Dufay’s published articles, especially those on phosphorescence and electricity, and argues that far from disdaining wonders he valued them as a means of discovering new regularities and of correcting and confirming hypotheses. Moreover, his interest in wonders was due partly to three concerns that he shared with other members of the Academy, and especially with chemists such as Claude-Joseph Geoffroy and Jean Hellot. These concerns were the production of a large amount of empirical data, the practice of alchemy, and the need to write for an audience of non-academicians. One moral of this study is that Dufay had more in common with two of his seventeenth-century sources, Robert Boyle and Athanasius Kircher, than historians have so far supposed. Another is that the difference between lay and learned attitudes to wonders, insofar as it existed in the eighteenth century, lay not in the ejection of wonders from serious inquiry but in the shifting background of expectations against which different groups judged which facts were wondrous and which were mundane or unsurprising.

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XXXIV. A letter from Mr. Wargentin, F. R. S. and Secretary of the Royal Academy of Sciences at Stockholm to the Rev. Mr Maskelyne, M. A. F. R. S. and Astronomer Royal at Greenwich, containing an essay of a new method of determining the longitude of places, from observations of the eclipses of Jupiter's satellites

Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London ◽

10.1098/rstl.1766.0035 ◽

1766 ◽

Vol 56 ◽

pp. 278-286 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Keyword(s):

Royal Academy ◽

New Method ◽

Academy Of Sciences ◽

Jupiter’S Satellites

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IX. An account of trigonometrical operations in the years 1821, 1822 and 1823, for determining the difference of longitude between the Royal Observatories of Paris and Greenwich

Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London ◽

10.1098/rstl.1828.0011 ◽

1828 ◽

Vol 118 ◽

pp. 153-239 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Keyword(s):

Royal Society ◽

Royal Academy ◽

The Difference ◽

Academy Of Sciences ◽

The Church ◽

Royal Society Of London

In the year 1790, a series of trigonometrical operations was carried on by General Roy, in co-operation with Messrs. De Cassini, Mechain, and Legendre, for the purpose of connecting the meridians of Paris and Greenwich. In England, the work commenced with a base measured on Hounslow Heath, whence triangles were carried through Hanger Hill Tower and Severndroog Castle on Shooter’s Hill, to Fairlight Down, Folkstone Turnpike, and Dover Castle on the English coast; which last stations were connected with the church of Notre Dame at Calais, and with Blancnez and Montlambert upon the coast of France. An account of these operations will be found in the Philosophical Transactions for 1790. In the year 1821, the Royal Academy of Sciences and the Board of Longitude at Paris communicated to the Royal Society of London their desire, that the operations for connecting the meridians of Paris and Greenwich should be repeated jointly by both countries, and that commissioners should be nominated by the Royal Academy of Sciences and by the Royal Society of London for that purpose. This proposal having been readily acceded to, Messrs. Arago and Matthieu were chosen on the part of the Royal Academy of Sciences, and Lieut.-Colonel (then Captain) Colby and myself were appointed by the Royal Society to co-operate with them.

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Funding and Directing Research or Rewarding Scientific Achievements?

Nuncius ◽

10.1163/18253911-03402007 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 34 (2) ◽

pp. 317-355 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Patrice Bret

Keyword(s):

19Th Century ◽

Royal Academy ◽

The State ◽

Future Research ◽

Main Question ◽

Technical Problems ◽

Académie Des Sciences ◽

Academy Of Sciences ◽

The 19Th Century ◽

Scientific Achievements

Abstract This study examines the science and technology prize system of the Académie des Sciences through a first survey of the prizes granted over the period extending from the 1720s to the end of the 19th century. No reward policy was envisaged by the Royal Academy of Sciences in the Réglement (statute) promulgated by King Louis XIV in 1699. Prizes were proposed later, first by private donors and then by the state, and awarded in international contests setting out specific scientific or technical problems for savants, inventors and artists to solve. Using cash prizes, under the Ancien Régime the Academy effectively directed and funded research for specific purposes set by donors. By providing it with significant extra funding, the donor-sponsored prizes progressively gave the Academy relative autonomy from the political power of the state. In the 19th century, with the growing awareness of the importance of scientific research, the main question became whether to use the prizes to reward past achievements or to incentivize future research, and the scale and nature of the prizes changed.

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