Natural Philosophy 187Theory outran practice: the hydrogen caught fi re and the latter- day Icarus
crashed before leaving France. Back in Paris demonstrators of nature faced
another sort of danger: one another. In the year of Pilâtre de Rozier’s death,
1785, at least sixteen public courses of good- quality lectures on natural
philosophy were offered in the City of Lights. In contrast, lectures did not
resume strongly in London after the war but found increasing audiences
in the industrializing midlands.^36 As the strong interest in the midlands
and in Paris suggests, the audiences of the better lecturers wanted instruc-
tion useful in advancing themselves as well as diversion for their guinea
or louis d’or.
French military engineering under Jean- Baptiste Vaquette de Gri-
beauval offered one avenue of advance. Alone among French artillerists,
Gribeauval proved almost an equal to the Prussians in gunnery during
the Seven Years’ War. He was put in charge of French artillery during the
peace. Under his direction, the curriculum in the central artillery schools
switched from elementary mathematics to more advanced forms and their
applications. A new multi- volume textbook, Etienne Bézout’s Cours de
mathématiques à l’usage du corps royal de l’artillerie, was adopted in 1770. It
ran from arithmetic and algebra through Newtonian mixed mathematics.
Instruction in chemistry and mineralogy, subjects newly made useful by
Lavoisier, strengthened in the 1770s and 1780s.^37 The state engineering
school at Mézières also exposed its students to mathematics that tested
their strength, accustomed them to thinking, and reduced their effective-
ness in the work place. There Charles Bossut did for the curriculum for
geographical engineers what Bézout accomplished at the same time for
the artillery schools.^38 Biot later singled out two graduates of Mézières as
the instigators of the quantifi cation of physics in France. These were Cou-
lomb and Charles Borda, a naval offi cer whose contributions to natural
philosophy included a delicate surveying instrument (the repeating circle)
that could make measurements as accurately as the large English theodo-
lites. Both Coulomb and Borda became members of the Paris Academy.
The policy of nurturing engineers on mathematics continued at the École
Polytechnique, set up in 1796 as a preparatory school for the higher en-
gineering faculties. The amount of time devoted to mathematics and its
applications in the school’s curriculum increased from 25 percent in 1799
to 50 percent in 1812.^39
Pierre Simon de Laplace was largely responsible for the mathematizing
of the curriculum at the École Polytechnique. He thus reinforced, with the
greater power that his elevated position under Napoleon gave him, the
direction he had pursued in the 1780s at Gribeauval’s artillery schools,
where he served as an examiner. Whatever value this reinforcement had