The Property of Science: Global Knowledge, Law, and Institutions, 1650–1750

In 1666, with the encouragement of Jean-Baptiste Colbert, Louis XIV established the French Academy of Sciences, a state institution devoted to scientific research. For Colbert, science was to be directed by the state. This development had profound implications for the global history of science, particularly for the way French scientific practice would impact the establishment of institutions devoted to mathematics and science in other parts of the early modern world, including China and Russia. The French legal system did not articulate an unambiguous notion of private property (unlike its English counterpart). Consequently, I hope to better understand the implications for how scientific knowledge was produced and codified in France without scientific practitioners appealing to the law to formally monopolize their intellectual property, since the French patent system did not emerge until 1791, after the French Revolution. The history of science and legal history in France have remained regrettably remote from each other. By thinking about the development of scientific thought, institutions, and conceptions of property together, it will be possible to understand how property regimes in France impacted the form science ultimately took.