Abstract

This study attempts to broaden the scope of historical investigation of the scientific culture of the French Revolution, which has traditionally been viewed from the perspective of elite contemporary scientists alone. Prominent academicians such as Lavoisier, Laplace, and Cuvier defined a scientific orthodoxy whose dominance has long been assumed due exclusively to scientific merit. ;The present study instead examines the work of a number of unorthodox natural philosophers who constituted a scientific underground of the old regime. Although they are all remembered for significant political, literary, or other accomplishments, their works of natural philosophy have generally been ignored or dismissed as "charlatanism," "pseudoscience," or worse. Their neglected texts form the subject of this study. ;Jean Paul Marat's scientific investigations into heat, light, and electricity are examined in detail. Other natural philosophers whose work is considered are Jean Louis Carra , Nicolas Bergasse , Jacques Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre , Pierre Samuel Du Pont de Nemours , Nicolas Edme Restif de la Bretonne , Jean Claude Delametherie , the Comte de Lacepede , Jean Baptiste Lamarck , and a pair of collaborators, the Baron de Marivetz and Louis Jacques Goussier . ;The conservative political reaction following the Revolution reinforced scientific conservatism as well; speculative natural philosophy--the "spirit of system"--was virtually banned from institutionalized science in France. The further development of French science can be better understood by taking this post-Revolutionary social context into account. The advance of knowledge might have been better served if the orthodox scientists had appreciated the potential value of the scientific underground's creative contributions. ;An open-minded examination of the work of Marat and the other natural philosophers leads to the conclusion that their science was normal science in the eyes of their contemporaries, and even by more universal criteria. To label it "charlatanism" or "pseudoscience" is ahistorical