Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of tables and figures
- Preface
- List of abbreviations
- INTRODUCTION
- 1 SCIENCE IN FRANCE
- 2 THE STRUCTURE OF THE ACADEMY
- 3 THE FUNCTIONING OF THE ACADEMY: SOME POSSIBLE ROLES
- 4 SCIENCE DIVIDED: THE SECTIONS
- 5 THE ACADEMICIANS
- 6 ELECTIONS: ‘GREEN FEVER’
- 7 REGISTRATION, JUDGEMENT AND REWARD
- 8 THE PRINTED WORD
- 9 AN ACADEMY UNDER GOVERNMENT CONTROL
- 10 ‘OUTSIDERS’: THE SCIENTIFIC FRINGE AND THE PUBLIC
- 11 THE INTERNATIONAL DIMENSION
- 12 THE CONTROL OF THE ACADEMY AND OF SCIENCE
- Name index
- Subject index
9 - AN ACADEMY UNDER GOVERNMENT CONTROL
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 October 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of tables and figures
- Preface
- List of abbreviations
- INTRODUCTION
- 1 SCIENCE IN FRANCE
- 2 THE STRUCTURE OF THE ACADEMY
- 3 THE FUNCTIONING OF THE ACADEMY: SOME POSSIBLE ROLES
- 4 SCIENCE DIVIDED: THE SECTIONS
- 5 THE ACADEMICIANS
- 6 ELECTIONS: ‘GREEN FEVER’
- 7 REGISTRATION, JUDGEMENT AND REWARD
- 8 THE PRINTED WORD
- 9 AN ACADEMY UNDER GOVERNMENT CONTROL
- 10 ‘OUTSIDERS’: THE SCIENTIFIC FRINGE AND THE PUBLIC
- 11 THE INTERNATIONAL DIMENSION
- 12 THE CONTROL OF THE ACADEMY AND OF SCIENCE
- Name index
- Subject index
Summary
The Royal Academy of Sciences will continue to remain under the protection of the King and will receive his orders through the particular Secretary of State, to whom his Majesty assigns the task.
(Regulations of 1699 from Fontenelle, Histoire du renouvellement de I'Académie des Sciences, my italics.)It is by science that we have been vanquished [in the Franco-Prussian war]. The reason for this lies in the regime which has oppressed us for 80 years, a regime which subordinates men of science to politicians and administrators.
(H. Sainte-Claire Deville, C.R., 72 (1871), 238, my italics.)Since the first days of August [1914], our Academy has only had one thought: to help the government in the defence of the motherland and of liberty.
(Paul Appell, speaking as President of the Academy, C.R., 159 (1914), 824.)Government control of the Academy?
The relationship between the Academy and the government was always a rather delicate one. Although Condorcet had used the expression ‘fonctionnaires publiques’ to describe members of the Institute which he planned, when the National Institute came into being in 1795 its members were not civil servants. Yet in so far as the National Institute was a government-sponsored body, its members obviously had a certain connection with the state, both in fact and in the public mind. They represented ‘official’, that is to say, government-sponsored science in a way the Royal Society never did, being ‘Royal’ in name only.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Science under ControlThe French Academy of Sciences 1795–1914, pp. 300 - 330Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1992