Science, Industry, and the Social Order in Post-Revolutionary France by Robert Fox

Abstract

836 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Since she has limited her book to 18th- and 19th-century England, Valenze does not analyze the reasons why, even though women’s work was valued, itwas already low paid in the 18th century. It would be interesting to see what a writer with Valenze’s skill and meticulous scholarship would do with the broader arguments of Cynthia Cockburn andJudy Wajcman regarding women’s low wages. Comparison with the process of industrialization in other countries would also test the universality of English examples. But these suggestions take nothing away from this well-documented and balanced treatment. Polished, lucid, and untendentious, TheFirst Industrial Woman would be appropriate for undergraduate and graduate education. This val­ uable contribution to the history of technology and economic devel­ opment is a model for future studies to explain the far-reaching ef­ fects of technological change. Daryl M. Hafter Dr. Hafter, professor of history at Eastern Michigan University, hasjust published European Women and Preindustrial Craft (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995). She is working on a long-term study ofwomen’s access to technology in 18thcentury France. Science, Industry, and the Social Order in Post-Revolutionary France. By Robert Fox. Aldershot, Hampshire, and Brookfield, Vermont: Variorum, 1995. Pp. xiv+291; illustrations, tables, notes, index. $92.95 (hardcover). This collection of seventeen essays, written over as many years, examines the “public face” of French science in the 19th century. Robert Fox has long been one of our most thoughtful analysts of the institutional life of French science during its difficult period of professionalization. Rejecting a simplistic notion ofFrench scientific “decline,” he shows how the French themselves manipulated these gloomy accounts. At the center of his essays is the controversy over whom science should serve. Tracking this debate allows Fox to lay out a periodization ofFrench science and tell a cautionary tale about the mixed blessings of professionalization. He also instructs us on how science refashioned itself to serve industrial concerns. Whom should science serve? Fox’s periodization corresponds with the political periodization of French sovereignty. In the first third of the 19th century (until Louis-Philippe), scientific careers were ruled by illustrious patron-savants; Laplace and Cuvier, the most prominent of these, dispensed appointments through their control of state institutions and personally guaranteed the merits of their clients. In the second third of the century (until the Third Repub­ lic), science was dominated by state ministers who required univer­ sity scientists to provide the bourgeoisie with the emblems of high culture and validate its sons in meritocratic examinations. And in TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 837 the final third of the century (until the Great War), some scientists increasingly sought to serve industrial needs, while others cultivated an international audience of their peers. In every period, however, dissenters decried the dominant form of servitude and pleaded for a different master. To serve a different master, however, meant offering a different kind of science—although the consequences of this were not always clear. As Fox notes in the central essay in this collection: “In as­ serting that the public face of science mattered far more than its content, [Minister] Fortoul wasjustifying the bureaucratic concep­ tion of academic life which had steadily gained ground since 1830” (p. 84). The cautionary note here is well warranted: the form of professionalization in this middle period was not necessarily condu­ cive to the innovative research we usually associate with a flourishing scientific community. To that extent, Fox subscribes to something like the “decline” thesis. In those essays that cover the last third of the century, however, Fox shows how French scientists eagerly refashioned their profession to serve industry. Unfortunately, they did so by training an oversupply of technologists, not by providing laboratory research to keep France competitive with the German chemical and electrical industries. Fox generally sidesteps the relationship between these public de­ bates and the practices of particular sciences. The exception proves the rule. In a fine article, he explains the decades of neglect shown Sadi Carnot’s articulation of the Second Law of Thermodynamics by pointing to Carnot’s—and his contemporaries’—doubts about his own theory—doubts which stemmed from inadequate and faulty experimental...