An instructional map of the ‘sciences’ in early modern France

Abstract

This article traces the early modern metamorphosis of Scholastic/ecclesiastical sciences [scientiae] and their changing relationship with Humanities [lettres] as well as mathematical and natural sciences. The late medieval knowledge–power complex—Aristotelian sciences in service of the ecclesiastical state—splintered to foster new complexes of humanities and natural sciences in competitive service of territorial states. Enlightened ‘sciences’ then came to comprise a mix of ecclesiastical and state-sponsored sciences—scholastic disciplines, ecclesiastical ‘sciences’, Humanistic fields of erudition, mathematical sciences, organized experimental inquiries, natural sciences, philosophy, and other useful compilations of administrative, cultural, and material subjects that claimed their status as ‘sciences’. Such proliferation and selective legitimation forged the ideal of the ‘sciences’ as true, good, useful, and implicitly pious disciplines that would produce virtuous citizens, scientists [sçavans], ecclesiastics, magistrates, and princes enlightened with their ‘science’ to serve the Christian nation-empire. Such moral—Christian republican—valuation of ‘sciences’ and savants in enlightened Europe can help us understand how and why they came to embody universal rationality and impartiality/objectivity that legitimized the European civilizing mission.