1 64 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



THE OLD ACADEMY OP SCIENCE, PAEIS. 1699-1793 



II 



By Dr. EDWARD F. WILLIAMS 



CHICAGO, ILL. 



IN" his account of the Old Academy of Science M. Maury expresses 

 the opinion that the history of the development of science in con- 

 nection with the Old Academy of Science should be read and studied 

 as a chapter in the development of mind, a chapter as important and as 

 interesting as any chapter in the political history of the century. It 

 traces contests in the search for truth. Of hardly less importance in the 

 history of literature is the work done by the two academies of Science 

 and of Inscriptions than that done by the French Academy itself, 

 devoted as that is to literature alone. 



The Academy of Science was reorganized in the last year of the 

 seventeenth century by Ponchartrain, minister of state, and put under 

 the control of his nephew, the Abbe Bignon, a man well fitted for the 

 position he was chosen to fill. The decree of reorganization was signed 

 at Versailles on January 26, 1699, and read to the academy on Feb- 

 ruary 4. A change was made in the number and character of the 

 members. Henceforth there were to be four classes of members : active, 

 or pensionary, who were to reside in Paris and give their time to the 

 study of science; honorary members who might be either foreigners or 

 natives of France; associate members; and pupils, young men of 

 promise who were admitted to the academy as students and helpers of 

 its active members with the expectation that some time they would be 

 received into the academy. Under the new arrangement all branches 

 of science were represented. Larger and better rooms than had been 

 occupied, rooms in the Louvre which the King himself had occupied, 

 were set apart for the use of the academy. 



A public meeting in honor of the reorganization was held on June 

 2, 1699. Fontenelle had taken the place of Duhamel, who had held the 

 position of secretary from the establishment of the academy by Colbert 

 in 1666. Fontenelle's eulogies, read at each annual meeting for a third 

 of a century, are a history of the academy in the lives and work of its 

 members. They are famous alike in the annals of science and of liter- 

 ature. The academy had a president, a vice-president, a director, and a 

 sub-secretary, as well as a perpetual secretary. The director and his 

 assistant were selected from the active members of the academy, the 



