We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 November 2019
Although maybe not the most fashionable area of study today, French science has a secure place in the classical canon of the history of science. Like the Scientific Revolution and Italian science at the beginning of the seventeenth century, French science, particularly eighteenth-century and early nineteenth-century French science, remains a safe, albeit conservative, bet in terms of history-of-science teaching and research. The classic trope of the passage of the flame of European science from Italy to Britain and France in the seventeenth and then eighteenth centuries is well established in overviews of the field. Specializing in research in this area is not, therefore, unreasonable as a career choice if you are aiming for a history-of-science position in Europe or even in the US. The Académie (royale) des sciences, with its state-sponsored model of collective research, provides a striking counterpoint to the amateur, more individualistic functioning of London's Royal Society – a foretaste of modernity in the institutionalization of science. Clearly naive, such a representation of French science serves as a good initial framework on which to hang half a century of critical historical research. If proof of the continued interest for eighteenth-century French science is needed, we can cite the Web-based project around Diderot and d'Alembert's Encyclopédie currently in progress under the auspices of the French Academy of Sciences. The large number of publications in the history of French science (in English as well as French) make it unreasonable to pick out one or two for special attention here. But what about history of science in France and the academic community that practises this discipline today? Here, I offer a very personal view and analysis of this community, trying to underline contrasts with the history of science in the UK and the US.
1 See http://enccre.academie-sciences.fr/encyclopedie, last accessed January 2019.
2 This article was written before Emmanuel Macron's recent proposal for a ten- to twentyfold increase in the fees to be paid by non-European students. This raise might well apply to UK citizens, depending on the outcome of the Brexit negotiations.
3 This analysis is shared by Jérôme Lamy in an article from 2003. While this was more than fifteen years ago, institutionally little has changed over the intervening years. Lamy, Jérôme, ‘La science, le continent ignoré des historiens français?’, Cahiers d'histoire: Revue d'histoire critique (2003) 90–91, pp. 133–151Google Scholar. Lamy does point out that the history of medicine has found its place in French history departments, but here researchers generally adopt a more social and less scientific approach to the field.
4 See www.cnrs.fr/inshs, last accessed January 2019.
5 While comforting in a certain sense, this type of trajectory offers little reassurance for the long-term prospects of the field. The recruitment of converts to the history of science following a crisis of vocation cannot possibly guarantee the future of the discipline.
6 There were other fields where there were no francophone journals on the list at all.
7 Receiving a full reimbursement for giving a paper at an international conference is far from automatic in a number of research laboratories. These funding difficulties for research are no doubt related to the truly appalling statistic that on average a French academic receives one semester of sabbatical (CRCT) for every 193 years of her career. CP-CNU, communiqué, 28 September 2018.
8 Tenure is almost automatic one year after recruitment, without any particular performance requirements in terms of teaching or research.
9 See Conseil national des universités (CNU), ‘Accueil’, at www.conseil-national-des-universites.fr, last accessed 8 November 2018.
