Eric Hobsbawm - Age Of Revolution 1789 -1848

THE AGE OF REVOLUTIONscience is not a simple linear advance, each stage marking the solutionof problems previously implicit or explicit in it, and in turn posingnew problems. It also proceeds by the discovery of new problems, ofnew ways of looking at old ones, of new ways of tackling or solving oldones, of entirely new fields of enquiry, or new theoretical and practicaltools of enquiry. And here there is ample scope for stimulation or theshaping of thought by outside factors. If in fact most sciences in ourperiod had advanced in a simple linear way, as was the case withastronomy, which remained substantially within its Newtonian framework,this might not be very important. But, as we shall see, our periodwas one of radically new departures in some fields of thought (as inmathematics), of the awakening of hitherto dormant sciences (as inchemistry), of the virtual creation of new sciences (as in geology), andof the injection of revolutionary new ideas into others (as in the socialand biological sciences).As it happened of all the outside forces shaping scientific developmentthe direct demands made on scientists by government or industrywere among the least important. The French Revolution mobilizedthem, placing the geometer and engineer Lazare Carnot in charge ofthe Jacobin war-effort, the mathematician and physicist Monge(Minister of the Navy in 1792-3) and a team of mathematicians andchemists in charge of war production, as it had earlier charged thechemist and economist Lavoisier with the preparation of an estimate ofthe national income. It was perhaps the first occasion in modern or anyother history when the trained scientist as such entered government,but this was of greater importance to government than to science. InBritain, major industries of our period were cotton textiles, coal, iron,railways and shipping. The skills which revolutionized these were thoseof empirical—too empirical—men. The hero of the British railwayrevolution was George Stephenson, a scientific illiterate, but a manwho could smell what would make a machine go: a super-craftsmanrather than a technologist. The attempts of scientists like Babbage tomake themselves useful to the railways, or of scientific engineers likeBrunei to establish them on rational rather than merely empiricalfoundations, came to nothing.On the other hand science benefited tremendously from die strikingencouragement of scientific and technical education and the somewhatless striking support for research, which arose during our period. Herethe influence of the dual revolution is quite clear. The French Revolutiontransformed the scientific and technical education of its country,chiefly by setting up the Ecole Poly technique (1795)—intended as aschool for technicians of all sorts—and the first sketch of the Ecole278