ABOUT THIS BOOK

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

TABLE OF CONTENTS

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgments

List of Abbreviations

1.1. Frontispiece to Denis Diderot and Jean d’Alembert’s Encyclopédie, ou, Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers (1751–72)

One: Introduction: Sensibility and Enlightenment Science

2.1. Portrait of Nicholas Saunderson (1682–1739), Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge

Two: The Blind and the Mathematically Inclined

2.2 and 2.3. A cataract operation, from Robert James, Dictionnaire universel de la médecine (1746– 48)

2.4. Plate from Nollet’s Leçons de physique expérimentale, 5th ed. (1759–66) representing a geometrical approach to vision

2.5. Jean-Baptiste Greuze’s L’Aveugle trompé (1755)

2.7. Descartes’s illustration of the analogy between vision and a blind man’s use of canes, from Descartes, La Dioptrique (1637)

3.1. Illustration of the conservation of charge in a Leyden jar, from David Colden, “Remarks on the abbé Nollet’s Letters on Electricity” (1751)

Three: Poor Richard’s Leyden Jar

3.2 and 3.3. Nollet’s effluences and affluences, as pictured in his Essai sur l’électricité des corps, 2nd ed. (1750)

3.4. Franklin’s industrious cork ball, equalizing the charge on Leyden jar, from Franklin, Experiments and Observations on Electricity (1751)

4.1. Marguerite Gérard’s 1779 etching To the Genius of Franklin, after Jean-Honoré Fragonard, with Turgot’s epigram of Franklin beneath it

Four: From Electricity to Economy

4.2. Anonymous Revolution-era engraving representing the peasantry crushed under the weight of the taille, the corvée, and other taxes

4.3. Revolution-era cartoon entitled “La Chute en Masse, Ainsi L’Etincelle Electrique de la Liberté, renversera tous les Trônes des Brigands Couronnés”

5.1. Depiction of a lightning conductor, from Beyer, Aux amateurs de physique (1809)

Five: The Lawyer and the Lightning Rod

5.2. Pierre Roch Vigneron’s portrait of Robespierre, after Adélaïde Labille-Guiard’s 1790 painting

5.3. Lightning strikes the Campanile of San Marco, Venice, 23 April 1745. From Figuier, Les Merveilles de la science (1870)

5.4. Rioting in Saint-Omer over Vissery’s lightning rod. From Figuier, Les Merveilles de la science (1870)

5.5. Lightning rod hat (1778), from Figuier, Les Merveilles de la science (1870)

5.6. Lightning rod umbrella designed by Barbeu-Dubourg, from Figuier, Les Merveilles de la science (1870)

5.7. The accidental death of Georg Wilhelm Richmann, from Figuier, Les Merveilles de la science (1870)

5.8. First test of the power of points as applied to lightning, at Marly-la-Ville, 10 May 1752, from Figuier, Les Merveilles de la science (1870)

6.1. Cartoon depicting the investigation of mesmerism, entitled Le Magnétisme dévoilé

Six: The Mesmerism Investigation and the Crisis of Sensibilist Science

6.2. A paralytic being cured by an electrical generator, from the abbé Sans, Guérison de la paralysie (1772)

6.3 and 6.4. Electrical amusements from the repertoire of William Watson, from his Expériences et observations . . . [sur] l’électricité (1748)

6.5 and 6.6. Scenes from Nollet’s public lectures, from his Leçons de physique expérimentale, 5th ed. (1759), and Essai sur l’électricité des corps, 2nd ed. (1750)

6.7 and 6.8. Scenes of mesmeric séances

7.2. Revolutionary-era engraving on the use of the new metric system

Seven: Languages of Science and Revolution

7.3. Jacques-Louis David’s Portrait de Monsieur Lavoisier et sa femme (1788)

7.4. Joseph Wright of Derby’s Experiment on a Bird in the Airpump (1768)

7.5. Emile and Jean-Jacques find their way home from the woods, illustration by Moreau le Jeune

7.6. Revolution-era cartoon caricaturing Jean-Sylvain Bailly

7.7. “A Revolutionary Committee under the Terror,” anonymous engraving after Aléxandre- Evariste Fragonard

7.8. “The Arrest of Lavoisier,” engraving by Jean Duplessi-Bertaux

7.9. Anonymous anti-Revolutionary engravings entitled The Patriotic Calculator

8.1. Sleeping Harvester representing Messidor ( June–July) from the Revolutionary calendar

Eight: Conclusion: The Legacy of the Sentimental Empiricists

Bibliography

Index