The Concept of Scientific Curiosity in Histoire de l’Académie royale des sciences (1699–1710): Bernard de Fontenelle and his fellow academicians

Abstract

This article deals with the use of the term ‘curiosity’ in the volumes of the Académie royale des sciences published under the title Histoire de l’Académie royale des sciences. The first part of the article demonstrates that members of the Académie often used ‘curiosity’ and related terms in an epistemological and methodological sense that has been little discussed by historians of curiosity. In the second part, the article focuses primarily on the relationship between the concepts of curiosity and utility. Academicians emphasized that their research was both curious and useful, but they assigned more importance to curiosity because they believed that only theoretical research could provide the insights that would foster further development. The most detailed interpretation of the relationship between the two categories was given by Bernard de Fontenelle in the preface to the first volume of Histoire, where he defended the view that utility was the result of curiosity.