• DOI:10.1177/007327539002800401
• Corpus ID: 143320471

The Culture of Science in Frederick the Great's Berlin

@article{Terrall1990TheCO,
  title={The Culture of Science in Frederick the Great's Berlin},
  author={Mary Terrall},
  journal={History of Science},
  year={1990},
  volume={28},
  pages={333 - 364}
}

• M. Terrall
• Published 1 December 1990
• Art
• History of Science

The practice of science must necessarily form part of a complex culture in which scientists live and work. This basic premise, far from being trivially obvious, can provide the foundation for a contextual history of science. While it has become commonplace for historians of science to situate discussions of theories, methods, experiments and observations in various kinds of contexts, I hope to show that contexts are not always easy to define, and that the fuzziness of philosophical, institutional, social and political boundaries contribute to the diversity of scientific practice. I Cultures are neither static nor monolithic; they are multifacetedand contested. I take conflict and dispute to be fundamental to any culture of science, and indeed to the broader culture encompassing science as well. Historians will never arrive at a total or definitive interpretation of any culture. What we can do is to point to the strategies and dynamics characteristic of the production of scientific knowledge in particular times and places, and to draw out congruences and conflicts with other aspects of the lives of its practitioners. From this conceptual starting point, I will investigate the Berlin Academy of Sciences as one setting in which certain features of Enlightenment culture were played out. My story focuses on the' individuals at the top of the institutional hierarchy: Frederick II, king of Prussia, and Pierre-Louis Moreau de Maupertuis, the French president of the academy. I will analyse the academy's place in the Prussian state and the dynamics of administering and justifying the academy. Examination of the ideology articulated by Frederick and Maupertuis in planning and running the Prussian Academy will show how they deployed their power. Maupertuis, in addition to his administrative role, used the academy as a forum for promoting his rational mechanics, based on the principle of least action. He found an exceptionally able and willing ally in Leonhard Euler, who applied the variational calculus to problems outlined by Maupertuis in less rigorous form. The story of the Berlin Academy's philosophical and political foundations is also the story of a program for providing mechanics with new metaphysical foundations. Frederick's Berlin displayed a peculiar cultural mix of German politics and French style, just as Frederick tried to integrate in his own person the