Science and Polity in France: The End of the Old Regime

Charles Coulston Gillispie

ene 2009 · Princeton University Press

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By 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. Charles Gillispie explores how the links between science and polity in France were related to governmental reform, modernization of the economy, and professionalization of science and engineering.

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Charles Coulston Gillispie is Dayton-Stockton Professor Emeritus of History at Princeton University, where he founded the program in History and Philosophy of Science in 1960. His books include The Edge of Objectivity; Lazare Carnot Savant; The Montgolfier Brothers and the Invention of Aviation; Pierre-Simon Laplace: A Life in Exact Science; and Science and Polity in France: The End of the Old Regime (all Princeton). He was also the editor of the Dictionary of Scientific Biography (16 volumes, 1970-1980). In 1997, he was awarded the Balzan Prize in the History and Philosophy of Science.