Science For A Polite Society Gender, Culture, And The Demonstration Of Enlightenment

Traditional accounts of the scientific revolution focus on such thinkers as Copernicus, Galileo, and Newton, and usually portray it as a process of steady, rational progress. There is another side to this story, and its protagonists are more likely to be women than men, dilettante aristocrats than highly educated natural philosophers. The setting i

The Introduction, in which the Author offers two tales of the Scientific Revolution -- Science in the Reign of Louis XIII -- Pawning off the New Science: Theophraste Renaudot and the Conferences of the Bureau d'adresse -- Of Black Sheep, False Suns, and Systematic Thought: Rene Descartes and His World -- Science in the Reign of Louis XIV -- A Science for a Polite Society: the Crown as the second most Philosophical Hat in Paris -- A Pretty Novel of Physics, in which Cogito, ergo sum meets l'Etat, c'est moi -- Science in the Reign of Louis XV -- The Demonstration of Enlightenment -- The Discovery of the Newtonian World; or, Flattening the Poles if not the Cartesians -- Electricity in the Eighteenth Century; or, The Philosophy of Shocks and Sparks -- The Conclusion, in which the Author Draws a Moral

Geoffrey V. Sutton teaches at Macalester College.