The influence of Napoleon Bonaparte on the Ecole Polytechnique has long been a matter for debate. In this article, the extent of this influence is illustrated, together with resistance within the school itself to Napoleon's attempts to bend it to his own will and use it for purposes of military adventure. Manuscript material, including Napoleon's own private plans for the reorganization of the school, is reproduced to throw light on his intentions and his own attitudes to education.

The career of Thomas Beddoes was moulded by British responses to the French Revolution. Beddoes, until appalled by the events of the Terror, saw France as the model for mankind. The government of England took the very different view that democracy was closely allied with jacobinism and sedition. The Home Office was the agency most immediately engaged in opposing sedition, and any criticism of the King, or of the constitution in church and state, was scrutinized as being potentially seditious. In (...) 1793, England and France went to war, and the following years saw treason trials and gagging bills, profoundly disturbing even to the more conservative among the friends of peace and liberty in England, Beddoes among them. (shrink)

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. (shrink)