Table of Contents

Contents Acknowledgments Introduction 1. The Montmor Discourse: Samuel Sorbiere and the Foundation of the Royal Academy of Sciences 2. The Esprits Superieurs: Bernard de Fontenelle's Academic Eulogies 3. Fear and Loathing in the Courts of Louis XV and Louis XVI: The Science and the Crisis of the Monarchy from Voltaire to Turgot 4. Struggle and Radicalization on the Eve of the Revolution: Condorcet and the Transformation of the Idea of the Sciences 5. The Coming of the Tenth Epoch: The Idea of the Sciences and the Revolution of 1789 Epilogue Bibliography About the Author

About the Author

G. Matthew Adkins teaches European history at Columbus State Community College.

Reviews

Adkins provides a fresh intellectual history of the idea of cultivation of the sciences . . . as it relates to individual virtue and political rationality. * American Historical Review *
The Idea of the Sciences is a book whose title and introduction promise a discipline enriching 'reinterpretation.' . . . The book will . . . be of interest to historians and philosophers of science, historians of Enlightenment thought, and those interested in the old regime. Its main achievement is its claim that Neostoic philosophy was at the root of a new and politically important moral idea or way of thinking that was forged and explored by early Enlightenment savants. Among them was the enterprising Samuel Sorbiere, whose aspirations to secure resources to fund scientific investigation place him in good company in 2014. * H-France Review *