ABSTRACT
Louis-Sébastien Mercier began his Tableau de Paris with a bird’s-eye view of Paris and noted that, as you walk through the streets, ‘everywhere science calls out to you and says, “Look”’.1 Were we, like Mercier, able to walk around eighteenth-century Paris and narrate what we saw, the presence of science might soon overwhelm our description. In a cabinet de physique on the rue St Jacques we could see a specialist in electricity apply a shock to a group of men and women, all holding hands so that they might feel the current pass through their bodies. While strolling near the Palaisroyal we might meet shop owners hawking scientific equipment and offering free demonstrations. These scientific merchants might try to sell us portable physics kits, for example, perfect for battling ennui during those long, dull trips to the countryside, or a small pocket-electrical machine that offered a surprisingly strong shock. More dramatically, a trip to the Champ de Mars in the mid-1780s might yield a balloon launch where we, and thousands of other spectators, could pay a small entrance fee, designed to supplement the cost of the balloons, and watch history in the making.2 Indeed, science in the age of the Enlightenment appeared throughout Paris in a multitude of forms and forums that constituted the public sphere. In addition to the ever-popular query of ‘what is Enlightenment?’ we might equally pose the question of ‘where is Enlightenment?’ or, more accurately, ‘where is Enlightenment science?’ The answer, it seems, is everywhere.
