Title: Science for a Polite Society
First published: 1995
Description: Science for a Polite Society is an intriguing reexamination of the social, cultural, and intellectual context of the origins of modern science. The elite of French society accepted science largely because of their personal involvement and fascination with the emerging "philosophy of nature." Members of salon society, especially women, were avid readers of works of natural philosophy and active participants in experiments for the edification of their peers.

Some of these women went on to champion the new science and played a significant role in securing its acceptance by polite society.

Sutton points out that the sheer entertainment value of startling displays of electricity and chemical explosions would have played an important role in persuading the skeptical. We can only imagine the effects of such drawing-room experiments on an audience that lived in a world illuminated by tallow candles. For many, leaping electrical arcs and window-rattling detonations must have been as convincing as Newton's mathematically elegant description of the motions of the planets.

With the acceptance and triumph of the new science came a prestige that made it a model of what rationality should be. The Enlightenment adopted the methods of scientific thought as the model of human progress. To be an "enlightened" thinker meant believing that the application of scientific methods could reform political and economic life, to the lasting benefit of humanity.

We live with the ambiguous results of that legacy even today, although in our own century we are perhaps more impressed by the ability of science to frighten, rather than to awe and entertain.
Subjects: Science, History, Philosophy, Science, history, Science, philosophy, Sciences, Histoire
Time periods: 17th century, 18th century
LC classification: Q125 .S982 1995