Science, Industry and the Social Order in Post-Revolutionary France.

• Author: Kindleberger, Charles P.

By Robert Fox. Brookfield, Vermont: Variorum, 1995. Pp. xiv, 291. $89.95.

This book by a historian of science consists of 17 published papers of varying length from 7 to 79 pages (55 of text, 24 of 201 notes), five in French, and much more on the history of science and of education than on industry or the social order. If it has a place in an economics journal, it lies with economists concerned with economic growth, and especially "social capability," which some econometricians find a proxy for in years of education. Moreover, education, both technical and scientific, is salient day when many, like Secretary of Labor Robert Reich, believe that the salvation of the American economy lies in more of both. What the book emphasizes is that there is education and education, not only scientific and technical (universities and research institutes vs. "plumbers" academies), but within scientific, traditional vs. innovative, popular vs. professional, controlled vs. free-ranging, well-funded vs. hand-to-mouth. A historian of science on France, to be sure, has no occasion to treat whether the vital question for the United States lies in early, middle or late education. In an illuminating review article, however, of a book on the Ecole Polytechnique by Terry Shinn [chapter XI], much is made of the fact that children of wealthy parents have a great advantage over those in their cohort of equal brains, being able to follow the high road through one of the two great Parisian lycees, specialized in preparing for the excessively mathematical and grandes ecoles, themselves overstressed in mathematical rigor. The emphasis on mathematics on entrance and subsequent studies [pp. v-61] is perhaps another link to the concerns of some American economists. Some distance from local interest is that after Fox complains that economic historians neglect the work of historians of science [pp. v-59], his index contains no references to such historians of technology as David Landes, Joel Mokyr and Nathan Rosenberg.

As it happened, the book arrived in the same mail as the Spring 1996 issue of Daedalus on industrial (and one financial) innovators: Bechtel, Cabot, Hatsutopoulos, Philip Johnson, Land and the like. France was great on scientific and technical innovation in the years from 1815 to 1830, and again after World War II, though the latter period, referred to once in the book, lies outside the period of interest. In the 1820s Germans like Liebig and Kekule came to Paris...