No Need for Geniuses: Revolutionary Science in the Age of the Guillotine

by Professor Steve Jones

Paris at the time of the French Revolution was the world capital of science. Its scholars laid the foundations of today's physics, chemistry and biology. They were true agents of an upheaval both of understanding and of politics. Many had an astonishing breadth of talents. The Minister of Finance just before the upheaval did research on crystals and the spread of animal disease. After it, Paris's first mayor was an astronomer, the general who fought off invaders was a mathematician while Marat, a major figure in the Terror, saw himself as a leading physicist. Paris in the century around 1789 saw the first lightning conductor, the first flight, the first estimate of the speed of light and the invention of the tin can and the stethoscope. The metre replaced the yard and the theory of evolution came into being. The city was saturated in science and many of its monuments still are. The Eiffel Tower, built to celebrate the Revolution's centennial, saw the world's first wind-tunnel and first radio message, and first observation of cosmic rays.Perhaps the greatest Revolutionary scientist of all, Antoine Lavoisier, founded modern chemistry and physiology, transformed French farming, and much improved gunpowder manufacture. His political activities brought him a fortune, but in the end led to his execution. The judge who sentenced him - and many other researchers - claimed that 'the Revolution has no need for geniuses'. In this enthralling and timely book Steve Jones shows how wrong this was and takes a sideways look at Paris, its history, and its science, to give a dazzling new insight into the City of Light.

Genres: History, Science, Nonfiction, France, French Revolution

225 pages, Kindle Edition

Published April 7, 2016

Reviews

[Alex Sarll]

The book takes its name from words supposedly uttered when the great chemist Lavoisier was condemned to death during the Reign of Terror. He's an emblematic figure in many ways; his experiments with gunpowder helped the American colonists free themselves from British rule, thus providing an ally for Revolutionary France; turning his work with nitrogen to agricultural ends, he helped deal with the widespread starvation of the French peasantry. But, given he also turned that same intellect and drive to increasing the efficiency of the cruel and corrupt tax farming system, he was heavily complicit in the suffering of the poor. So whether revolutions happen because things are getting worse or because they're getting better, either way Lavoisier was in part the author of his own misfortune. Also, it turns out, the first person to use a guinea pig as, well, a guinea pig. I had wondered. And because it was an age of polymaths, there are plenty more stories like this: Choderlos de Laclos, author of Dangerous Liaisons, was also an artillery officer who helped get exploding shells into general use. Jones contends that Paris circa the Revolution (and for a few decades either way) was particularly strong in people who were both politicians and scientists, which I'm not sure entirely holds up when you consider Franklin and Jefferson in the US (even if the latter tended to be hilariously wrong about most things), and Newton's career in the UK. Still, allow that there are at least many interesting examples, if not a particularly anomalous abundance. So Marat, when not being a murderous tyrant or wanting mathematics suppressed for elitism, was at least among the first to call bullshit on Newton's supposed seven basic colours. Robespierre made one of his first appearances on the public stage in a court case where a man put up a lightning rod and his neighbours (today and in Britain they would doubtless be devotees of the Mail, Express or Canary) protested that it was sure not only to attract storms from miles around, but also earthquakes and even volcanoes. But Robespierre's sentiments there soon curdled, like Marat's bitterness at not being elected to the Academy, such that both of them ended up with a disdain for experts and intellectuals which chillingly prefigures our own era's Gove and Trump. Of course, while they may have been on the opposite side to Lavoisier, they too would both be consumed by the beast they unleashed, and so many other revolutionaries with them: the printer who came up with 'Liberté, égalité, fraternité', the first public singer of 'La Marseillaise', the inventor of that revolutionary calendar which was even sillier (and mercifully, much less long-lived) than the metric system - none of them famous names, but all suffered similar ends.

My big objection, though, is that there's not quite enough of this stuff. The book presents as The Age of Wonder with more executions, and in some chapters that's not far off, but elsewhere it feels more like the era is just a jumping-off point, and sometimes not even that - the material on the Eiffel Tower and the Curies surely relates to the anniversary of the Revolution rather than the event itself, which has to constitute mission creep. We get some pen-portraits of key players, but other figures remain indistinct - I still couldn't tell you anything to distinguish between Lagrange and Laplace as people, say. One chapter looks like it's going to be about the noble "high priest of the tuber", Parmentier, but instead diffuses into a general potted history of potatoes. Now, I'm as interested in potatoes as the next man - assuming he's Mr Potato Head, who is also head of the Potato Marketing Board - but the link to revolutionary Paris seems a little stretched by the end. Infuriatingly, the one time I felt the digression could have sustained a whole chapter, if not a book (the rise and fall of guano as a fertiliser) instead sees Jones rediscover a gift for concision.
In places, there are odd glitches and editing failures ('sadist' once being used where 'masochist' was clearly sought especially amused me, given de Sade had earlier been left pointedly unnamed when he did briefly enter the story). Elsewhere, Jones can come across as pettish and even snobbish in a way which belies his intelligence: however much you may dislike 'Things Can Only Get Better', say, in no meaningful sense can it be called "a dirge". Similarly, Jones is clearly concerned by extinction and pollution, so why does he only talk about 'Greens' as regards their hostility to genetic modification of crops (a position which he flatly proclaims to be mistaken without fully engaging with the more legitimate of the objections)? Why say that "fantasy writers" have been interested in L3 as a location for a hidden planet, thus needlessly trolling the SF fans (and indeed writers) who you'd think should be among his natural demographic?

So, there is much here I could happily have left aside, and more that was fine but possibly not quite what was advertised. Still, there's enough of what I sought, from the botched reforms of measurement which saddled us with the inconstant kilogram and arbitrary metre, to the entertaining proto-evolutionist Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire and his proposal that you could make a squid by folding a dog in half (mercifully not something anyone actually attempted, despite the lax animal rights standards of the era's experimenters). The final chapter, on the recent rehabilitation of Lamarck, is predictably good given that biology is Jones' specialism and he even studied under the man who gave us the term 'epigenetics'. Frustrating in places, but I certainly don't regret the reading of it.

[Casey · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was expecting a much more coherent narrative, something like Richard Holmes does in The Age of Wonder, but that never really materialised. The topic is fascinating but there wasn't nearly enough of anything tying the science discussed to any aspect of the revolution. A lot of it was presented without much context. These scientists did these things. They presumably lived in the same time period or they wouldn't be in the book. Then some stuff about how it developed after. Ok new chapter. At times it read like an undergraduate essay. The topic is definitely cool and I learned and was reminded of cool things, it just didn't have enough typing it all together to feel like a book rather than a series of (definitely cool) facts.

[Ian Banks · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very broad and entertaining survey of the role that Paris and France have played in the history of science. While making the point that while Britain was famous for its literature, Austria/ proto-Germany was famous for its music and that France made a big name in Science, it doesn't downplay the role that revolution aged in the battle against scientific progress. While it takes its title from an apocryphal sentencing handed down to Lavoisier by a Revolutionary judge, it could have just as easily quoted Robespierre who declared that legislators have no need of facts. I found any number of parallels between the French Revolution and the distrust of experts we have now, even down to the closing quote from Napoleon that he could have been a great scientist if he hasn't been conquering the world, which resonates with the blusterings of one of our world leaders at the moment.

I loved most of this and found a lot to think about and reflect on. If it had a fault it would be that it may have crossed a few too many disciplines for me to follow it really effectively, which is my problem and not the authors.

[Richard Goth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good introduction to a very interesting subject but I found, as a historian that he got bogged down in the minutiae of the succeeding scientific discoveries. I was expecting more insight into the revolution and the scientific mindset of the time

[Gordon Wells · Rating 2 out of 5]

Many of his attempts to link modern scientific discoveries to the revolution feel tortured.

Also in desperate need of a bibliography. Did the Irish really eat an average of 14 lbs of potatoes a day?

[Esra Kahraman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Pazar Kadınları
Fransız Devrimi şu sözlerle başlar; “Yönetenlerin azametli görünmelerinin tek sebebi, bizim dizlerimiz üzerine çökmüş olmamızdır. Ayağa kalkın!” 13 Temmuz 1789

Ekim, 1789’da Pazar Kadınları Hotel de Ville’i kuşatma altına aldılar ve yağmurlu bir günde otuz kilometre uzaklıktaki Louis’nin sarayına yürüyüşe geçtiler. Yol boyunca, burjuvalar, proleterlerden oluşan binlerce kadın katıldı aralarına. Karşı cinsten az sayıda kişi katıldı. Silahlı Ulusal Muhafızlar da onları takip ediyordu. Kısa zamanda sarayı kuşattılar. Carlyle’in yüce gönüllü olmaktan uzak sözleriyle ifade edilecek olursa; “üzerlerinden sefalet ve pislik akan öbek öbek kadın; uzun saçlı erkek haşarılığıyla, baltalarla, paslı kargılarla, eski tüfeklerle, demir nallı çomaklarla silahlanmış, aç bir isyandan başka hiçbir şeye benzemiyorlardı”.
...
Geriye dönüp bakıldığında Pazar Kadınlarının yürüyüşü monarşinin ve –bir süre sonra da- hükümdarın kendisinin ölüm fermanına doğru atılmış kaçınılmaz bir adım olarak görülebilir.

Giyotin!
Ölüm cezasına karşı olan iyi kalpli doktor Guillotin, 1790 yılında, insani ölüm aletini giyotini icat ettiğini, “mekanizma gürleyerek düşecek, kafa aniden kopacak, kan fışkıracak, adam ortadan kalkacak” diye tanıttı. Giyotine giden bir mahkumu, “şimdi makinemle kafanızı göz açıp kapayana kadar uçuracağım ve siz hissetmeyeceksin!” diye teselli edecek kadar hümanisttir!
Kanlı bir günde, millet meclisinin yirmi bir üyesi yaklaşık yarım saatte giyotinle idam edilir. Sonraki günlerde ise giyotin sayısı ölüm talepleri karşısında yetersiz kalmış...

[Lee McKerracher · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you are a science nerd you will love this book and if not, I'm still sure you would enjoy the history and anecdotes behind Steve Jones' very entertaining book on science in the age of the guillotine.

Many of those featured in the book will be familiar, including Cassini (the guy they named the Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn after) who was the director of the Paris Observatory, and Gustave Coriolis whose love and study of atmospheric patterns is honoured today by the Coriolis effect.

But there are many others who delved in science whose names are not familiar, but even so they had a huge impact on the lives of their contemporaries and through to today. Nicolas de Condorcet worked on electoral systems (we may or may not thank him for that) but he also focused his attention of France's national education system and actively promoted the rights of women - yes back in the 1790s!

Jean-Sylvan Bailly calculated the arc of Halley's Comet which helpfully means we know when it is coming back so we can cast our eyes skyward to watch the show.

So many stories to discover - especially those brave souls that launched themselves into the air via coated paper 'balloons' powered by fire - all in the name of science.

Such an entertaining and informative book.

[Divakaran · Rating 2 out of 5]

Some interesting facts in here but many parts are just painfully boring. I was disappointed that the author had not done better to present more coherent arguments because nothing really ties the facts presented in this book down with much larger concepts such as those about science and its progression, the revolution in France, the ideas of the age of Enlightenment or something else entirely. What's more frustrating is that links between the topics in this book and that of revolutionary France are a stretch at best.

What I did learn is perhaps best illustrated in Isaac Newton's famous phrase "standing on the shoulders of Giants", i.e. success in scientific advancement during the age of Enlightenment benefit from the many scientific works and interests undertaken by a great number of scientist (who don't just come from France nor are they all of that era). And as European society grew more accepting of challenging ideas of the past about their world, their rights and the role of mankind; it spurred more scientist to embark on scientific discoveries to test established beliefs about the natural world.

[Sue Chaplin · Rating 4 out of 5]

History, history of science and science combined, not one of his usual books but I did find it really interesting, particularly the chapter on measurement and the attempts to get precise and accurate standards. It was also interesting to learn of the difference in attitude of and to scientists in France compared to the UK, even if several of them did end up on the guillotine.

[Henk · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent book, nice to read. It contains a lot of scientific information and facts about the period of the French Revolution and other periods. Steve Jones is an excellent storyteller. One point of criticism: the story line is sometimes hard to follow because the author takes a lot of time to make his point. But: certainly worth reading.

[Jeremy · Rating 5 out of 5]

A surprisingly interesting look at French scientists, their discoveries and their involvement in civic life and politics in the 18 and 19th centuries. Full of fascinating facts and snippets. Thoroughly engrossing. Jones has a very engaging style. A pleasure to read and I will be looking out for more of his books to read in the future

[A · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent recount of the work of the scientists, mathematicians and the politics in 18th century France, and how those people still influence our understanding of the world /universe today.

[Mikeh5972 · Rating 4 out of 5]

An enjoyable read which nicely recounts the vast contributions made to the understanding of science by a host of French scientists around the years of the French Revolution. Steve Jones writes in a very engaging style and brings together a huge amount of information in a well constructed work.
It would have been useful if a few more of the French quotations had been translated for those of us whose French is not quite up to the mark.

[Jane Walker · Rating 5 out of 5]

Unexpectedly excellent book, as Jones shows the science which emerged from around the time of the French Revolution, and how the scientists were involved in the state. In each area he takes us through to the present, with some surprising developments in, for instance, our understanding of evolution. The one jarring note is that Jones feels free to insult the ecology movement.

[Virginia Rand · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wish this book had the translations of all the french quotes it used. I suspect Google translate doesn't do them justice. :-(