Savant and the State

Robert Fox is professor emeritus of history of science at the University of Oxford. He was awarded the History of Science Society's 2015 Sarton Medal for lifetime scholarly achievement. He is the editor of Technological Change: Methods and Themes in the History of Technology.

• PrefaceIntroduction1. Science and the New OrderThe Return of the BourbonsPatronage, Authority, and the Profession of ScienceScience and the Industrial AgeA Philosophy for the Times: The Roots of Positivism2. Voices on the PeripheryAcademies and SocietiesThe Devotee: Nature, Learning, and LocalityScience and DecentralizationThe Triumph of the Center3. Science, Bureaucracy, and the EmpireThe Trials of Academic ScienceEducation, Industry, and the Imperial StateThe Bureaucracy of LearningThe Roots of Academic Reform4. Science, Philosophy, and the Culture of SecularismThe Midcentury: Conformity and Dissent in French PhilosophyThe Nature of Life: Pasteur–Pouchet RevisitedThe Radical Synthesis and Its EnemiesA Faith for the Age: The Religion of Humanity5. Science for AllFashioning the AudienceMasters of the Mass Market: Flammarion and FiguierThe Spoken WordBroader Audiences, Bigger Stakes6. The Public Face of Republican ScienceThe Savant at War and PeaceCountercurrents: Science in the Catholic TraditionThe Republic of the SavantsFin de Siècle: From Inspiration to AnxietyConclusionAppendix A: The French System of Education and ResearchAppendix B: Exchange Rates and Incomes in Nineteenth-Century FranceAbbreviationsNotesBibliographical NoteIndex

In writing a history of science and cultural politics in nineteenth-century France, Fox has achieved a formidable and admirable synthesis. -- Mary Jo Nye Metascience Such a bold undertaking would flounder in the hands of anyone not possessed of superior scholarship and decades of experience. Savant and the State could have been written by no one other than Robert Fox. -- Clifford Cunningham Sun News Network A skilful balance between speculative and thought-provoking thematic work and accounts of the specific, the confined, and the material... Brilliant and well-researched. -- Sophie Waring British Journal for the History of Science This work should be of inestimable value to all historians of science, France, and European culture. -- Martin S. Staum American Historical Review A valuable synthesis of the variety of political and cultural roles played by the scientific enterprise in France from the end of the First Empire to the outbreak of World War I... A broad-ranging, balanced survey of the state of the field... In The Savant and the State, Fox has written what is likely to remain the definitive survey of public science in nineteenth-century France for some time to come. -- Alex Csiszar Journal of Modern History