The power of modern science

By the nineteenth century science had reached a period of adolescence. Following this metaphor, the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries would correspond to a period of childhood when, after a long infancy, the universe began to be thought of in non-geocentric terms and investigations began with new scientific instruments like the telescope and the microscope. The seventeenth century also witnessed the beginnings of serious scientific organisation. Enough natural wonders had been revealed for some governments to begin to think that this new activity should come under state control, or at least state supervision. There is no better example of this than the Royal Academy of Sciences, founded in Paris in 1666 under the patronage of Louis XIV.

Whatever one's view of the control of science, one may feel that the French were far-sighted to see in immature science an activity capable of enormous growth.