Royal Patronage and Seventeenth Century Science: L'academie De Physique De Caen, 1662-1672 (France).

Abstract

This dissertation presents the institutional history of the Academie de physique de Caen (1662-1672). Although this academy was a short-lived institution, its history offers an important case study in the early-modern institutionalization of science. The Academie de physique was founded during the ten year period that saw the creation of the first modern experimental societies, and , as with the Cimento, the Royal Society of London, and the Paris Academy of Sciences, the rationale for this academy in Caen was the establishment of a new form of scientific organization that would coordinate the efforts of individual practitioners. Its history thus speaks first to the strong contemporary interest in collective scientific research. A second point of historical significance for this academy is its association with Louis XIV's government. In 1667 the Academie de physique was incorporated as a royal academy of sciences. In 1670 the academy was granted royal funding. Nevertheless, by the end of 1672 it had been ab and oned by its members. Every previous discussion of this academy has shared the conclusion that royal incorporation ruined a viable scientific society. From the very earliest accounts written by Pierre-Daniel Huet, who was the group's founder and early patron, the royal incorporation has been dealt with as an attempt to transfer institutional proprietorship to the monarchy while the early failure of the academy has been interpreted as an unfortunate consequence of royal incorporation. Based on the analysis of letters written to the patron Huet by the academy's secretary, and re Graindorge, this study arrives at a distinctly different interpretation of the relationship between Huet's patronage, the royal incorporation, and the closing of the academy. Although the Academie de physique was clearly conceived as an institution devoted to experimental science, its members were never able to translate the ideal of collective research into an effectively coordinated program. That issue, which was inherent in the concept of the academy, created problems even before the group was taken under royal patronage. Ultimately, then, the causes of the failure of the Academie de physique are not found in the effects of the royal incorporation; rather, they are found in the difficulty of translating the ideal of experimental science into a practicable institution.