Natural Philosophy 183existed, not even election into a learned society, and, in any case, rejec-
tion by one usually could be repaired by application to another. Few who
desired an affi liation with natural philosophy shared the fate of the unre-
quited philosopher whose tombstone, now in a museum in Dijon, reads
“Ci- gît un qui ne fut rien, pas même académicien.”
THE STRING OF PHILOSOPHERS
- Physics for Display
In the spring of 1798, Deluc wrote his great friend and colleague Georg
Christoph Lichtenberg, professor of mathematics and physics at the Uni-
versity of Göttingen:
I told you, mon cher Monsieur, that there is no one I prefer to talk physics
with than you; because I’ve always seen that like me (if I dare say so) you love
physics for itself; which is true of very few people. Some do physics to talk
about it, or to make a reputation, or to get a job; but the feeling and love for
the truth are rare.^28Together with one other consideration, Deluc’s rough typology of mo-
tivations—doing physics for display, reputation, career, and love—can
serve as a classifi cation of natural philosophers. That other consideration,
which allows a subclassifi cation of the careerists, was the Enlightenment’s
programs of rationalizing arts, sciences, and social institutions, and of
sweeping away customs and concepts that had no deeper foundation than
habit and tradition. Rationalization coincided with the interests of bu-
reaucratizing governments eager to curtail wasteful ineffi ciencies of the
ancien régime. The tougher, leaner, more mathematical experimental phi-
losophy of the later eighteenth century both served and profi ted from this
coincidence. Particularly after the devastation that the Seven Years’ War
infl icted on Austria and Prussia and the humiliation it visited on France,
the larger states recognized the need for a better accounting and more
effi cient use of their resources. At the same time, more powerful steam
engines came into service in mills and mines, machines and weapons be-
came more precise, agricultural practice waxed scientifi c, and communi-
cations improved. Engineers, agriculturalists, and technocrats of all kinds
were in demand. The entrance of the expert, the fi rst step toward realiz-
ing the rationalization demanded by Enlightenment, and the beginning
of the effective mathematizing of natural philosophy, were coeval. The