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Career-Making in Post-Revolutionary France: the Case of Jean-Baptiste Biot

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2009

Eugene Frankel
Eugene Frankel
Affiliation:
Division of Solar Technology, US Department of Energy, Washington, DC 20545, USA.
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Extract

Science is an occupation as well as an intellectual endeavour. This fact is extremely well known, but its consequences have been little explored by historians of science. Sociologists such as Merton, Hagstrom, and Storer have argued that occupational rewards motivate a scientist to publish and thereby further the intellectual ends of the scientific community. Yet, as I have shown in a recent paper, such rewards can also lead to work which is hasty, superficial, and blindly uncritical of the dominant paradigm. Thus the relationship between career motivation and genuine intellectual achievement must be regarded as problematic at best.

Type
Research Article
Information
The British Journal for the History of Science , Volume 11 , Issue 1 , March 1978 , pp. 36 - 48
Copyright
Copyright © British Society for the History of Science 1978

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References

NOTES

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11 Archives Nationales, Paris, MS. Cote F17 1343B.

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19 Biot-Lacroix correspondence, No 12. No date.

20 Ibid., No 25. No date.

21 Ibid., No 3. 14 pluvoise (3 February 1800).

22 Ibid.

23 Ibid., No 19. 23 germinal (3 April 1800).

24 Ibid., No 18. No date.

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44 Biot-Lacroix correspondence, No 12. No date.

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56 Ibid., p. 3.

57 Ibid., p. 5.

58 Ibid., p. 7.

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69 Biot-Lacroix correspondence, 13 04 1800 and 23 05 1800.Google Scholar

70 Collège de France, Archives, ‘Affiche des cours pour l'année 1791’.

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