The Politics of Writing About Making

This chapter argues that writing about their own art was a political act through which artistes presented themselves and their work as central to France's projects of improvement. They did so by discussing the features that distinguished them from other artisans and by articulating a theory of cognition based on sensorial intelligence. Artistes reacted to the conception of a slowly moving artisanal world, countering that in artisanal workshops, opportunities for improvement occurred frequently though they often went unnoticed because of the artisans' ignorance and attachment to routine. Artistes, by contrast, were able to improvise and be in the moment when serendipitous opportunities presented themselves.

Society of Arts

This chapter considers the Société des Arts as a microcosm of overlapping networks modeled on the working practices of the artiste, particularly clock- and watchmakers. It compares the Société with other institutions of artisanal and intellectual sociability—such as guilds, royal academies, commercial societies, and the Republic of Letters—and reveals the role that the group played in the constitution of the Académie de Chirurgie in 1731. The chapter also offers a nuanced discussion of the relationship between the Société and the Académie des Sciences, and of the reasons that led to the early dissolution of the Société des Arts.

Theory, Practice, Improvement

This chapter talks about early attempts to constitute associations dedicated to the improvement of the mechanical arts, casting light in particular on the earlier, little-known Société des Arts founded in Paris during the Regency (1718). It frames such associations within the broader economic history of France, with special attention to the history of artisans' migrations between France and England, and the demands deriving from France's colonial expansion. Artistes involved in these associations advocated a clear distinction between theoretical and practical knowledge, which aimed to discredit the expertise of academic institutions in technical matters. Appropriating Francis Bacon's distinction between operative and speculative knowledge, artistes contrasted the philosophers' search for truth to their expertise on practical matters and their concern with public good.

Lost Knowledge and the History of the Arts

This chapter situates the emergence of the projects on the “history of the arts” in the political and cultural contexts of the 1660s, particularly with respect to the memorandum on trade that Colbert prepared for Louis XIV in 1664. It addresses the ongoing discourse on lost knowledge, revived in the late 1680s by the Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns, which divided the Académie Francaise and intrigued the reading public. The mechanical arts offered an abundance of evidence to support the new idea that human knowledge was cumulative, which was the preliminary step for the elaboration of the notion of progress.

Epilogue

This concluding chapter explains that by focusing on the artiste, the study has uncovered the heterogeneous interests that gravitated around the mechanical arts in the years between the foundation of the Académie des Sciences and the publication of the first volumes of the Encyclopédie. It discusses the mechanical arts as a domain of practical knowledge that the French state regarded as strategic to its commercial and colonial expansion. Practitioners of the mechanical arts who regarded themselves as artistes were eager to inform the decision-making processes of the state in these matters. By bringing artistes to center age, the chapter's broader intention is to highlight the practical, material, discursive, and artifactual contexts within which the categories of improvement, useful knowledge, and progress emerged.

L’Esprit in the Machine

This chapter examines the role of the mechanical arts in the articulation of educational programs and of projects of reform of the manufacturing system. It shows that around the 1730s, mechanical devices such as clocks and watches were considered as material metaphors of the rational mind. A positive conception of the repetitive nature of artisanal gestures underpinned the introduction of machines in popular educational programs, such as Louis Dumas' method for teaching children how to read, or the abbé Nollet's course of experimental physics. These inventions relocated skill from the body of the artisan into the machine, and so introduced a new system of production that mechanized human labor and silenced potentially riotous workers.

Réaumur and the Science of the Arts

This chapter looks at the connections between natural history and the mechanical arts in the work of René Réaumur, a prominent member of the Académie des Sciences. It argues that his understanding of natural materials created connections among the natural world, the mechanical arts, and the world of industry and trade. For Réaumur, the history of the arts was strategic to the economic advancement of France because it would stimulate artisans to improve their techniques and promote technical literacy among entrepreneurs who owned manufactures. He conceived of the encyclopedia of the arts as an instrument that would enable the learned public to understand the true value of labor and to appreciate the actual cost of useful items.

Introduction: Savants, Artisans, Artistes

This introductory chapter focuses on the artiste to explain the relationship among science, the mechanical arts, and the state in Old Regime France. Its main chronological arc is between the foundation of the Académie Royale des Sciences in 1666 and the publication of the first volumes of the Encyclopédie in 1751. The chapter discusses the Société des Arts, founded in Paris in 1728, as the most visible attempt to turn the expertise of the artiste into an instrument of the state. The society's ambitious program has attracted the attention of several Enlightenment scholars, who have pointed to the intellectual connections between the program of the Société des Arts and Diderot and D'Alembert's Encyclopédie.