Geoscience Reference
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decision. The budget allocated to define the metric system was three times the
annual budget of the Academy, “a little
gateau
[cake]” according to Jean-Paul
Marat, that the academicians could share. Marat sneered at the academicians, coining
the scornful word
scientifiques
to replace the word in common use at the time,
savants
(wise people, intellectuals). This was to belittle what they did, in the same
way that, in modern times, religious fundamentalists use
scientism
instead of
science
.
But, just as the modern cosmologist Fred Hoyle was unhappy that his coinage of
the phrase
Big Bang
became the accepted term for the present-day theory of the
origin of the Universe (which Hoyle thought a completely erroneous concept),
Marat would have been unhappy to see his coinage become the accepted word for
science
and
scientists
.
People
Jean-Paul Marat (1743-1793)
Originally a doctor, Marat was the greatest revolutionary journalist of his day, twice an
exiled, vitriolic editor of
l'Ami du Peuple
(
The People's Friend
) which was the preferred
newspaper of the revolutionaries. He was made a Deputy in the National Convention in
1792 and helped stir up the class hatred that led (after his death) to the period known as
The Terror in which 17,000 people were executed. He was himself assassinated, stabbed in
his bath by a royalist sympathizer named Charlotte Corday, in an episode painted by
Marat's colleague in the Convention Jacques-Louis David (1748-1825) in a picture called
The Death of Marat
. Today, this painting is displayed in the Musées Royeaux in Brussels
- there are several copies, notably in the museums of Dijon, Reims, and Versailles.
However, the project to remeasure the Earth along the Paris Meridian was not
simply a gravy train for the geodesists. Perhaps there was an element of this in the
project; it could also have been a way that the members of the Academy could
protect themselves from the charges of elitism being flung from the Revolutionaries
in their direction by carrying out a project of practical use
18
. Additionally, there
were inconsistencies between the measurements of the figure of the Earth in Italy
and in France, through Rome and through Paris respectively. The discrepancies had
to be identified and a new survey produced.
The Academy nominated Pierre-François-André Méchain (1744-1804) and
Cassini IV to remeasure the Paris Meridian. Méchain would measure the southern
stretch of the meridian into Spain. Cassini IV was to be, by inheritance, the leader
of the project and should measure the northern meridian himself. Cassini dithered
because he was unable to come to terms with the new political realties of revolu-
tionary France and unwilling to leave Paris. He wished to direct an assistant to carry
out the fieldwork but the Academy refused; he must measure for himself, the better
to understand the data. Cassini would not do it. The Academy chose to replace him
and appointed Jean-Baptiste-Joseph Delambre (1749-1822) in his place (
Fig. 31
).
According to historian I. Bernard Cohen (1970), “Delambre's early life resembles
those novels of the nineteenth century in which industry overcomes hardship and is
rewarded with social distinction and financial gain.” He won a scholarship from his
local school in Amiens to go to Paris and while there became skilled in languages.
18
On a vist to the Beijing Observatory, I was told that during the Cultural Revolution in China in
the 1960's the astronomers researched on sunspots and solar physics for the same reason.
