Politics of Antebellum American Science (original) (raw)

SCIENCE is difficult tO imagine without elites, but whether elites are necessary is an obscure question. There are at least two kinds of elites in science: elites of talent and elites of another kind whose "necessity" derives from the realities of politics and patronage, the fact that some group needs to speak for science to the sources of support for science. The difference between the two raises a question about the historical development of science. Do the elites of talent arise first and subsequently produce an elite that speaks for them politically? Or does a political elite need to come first, in order to secure the basis on which to develop an elite of talent? Or do the two kinds of elites exist in a problematic tension that is especially acute when both are young and poorly developed? And what if the manner of selection of the two elites differs, if one is based on gentlemanliness, the other on merit, for example? American science prior to the Civil War brings out these questions in a particularly acute form. The period saw the emergence of a quite powerful political elite within science who oversaw a lucrative source of patronage, the Coast Survey, and made it into a central scientific institution. The power and vanity of this political elite within science produced an understandably violent response. The main figure in this elite was Alexander Dallas Bache. Bache, a grandson of Benjamin Franklin, was the product of two powerful political families and was not only intensely ambitious but extremely successful in his role as a man of science, and particularly as a practitioner of the arts of scientific politics. Bache took over the Coast Survey through intense politicking and wire-pulling, both within the small world of American science and with his powerful relations in American politics. The book takes the overt form of a political biography and a narrative of Bache's career. Slotten begins the story of Bache and the rise and fall of the Coast Survey with a discussion of the milieu of Bache's childhood and youth. He was especially influenced by his high-minded mother who imparted a legacy of emotional control to him. Bache went to West Point, under a famously severe superintendent, and succeeded enormously. He was first in his engineering class and became a lieutenant in the Corps of Engineers. He soon left, and became a professor at the University of Pennsylvania in 1828. But he was careful to keep up his military connections, which had a future political use. In Philadelphia, he was an active citizen. He became a reformer of high schools, and in this capacity promoted science. Slotten emphasises the culture and especially the religious culture of Bache's milieu. He stresses what he calls the culture of Whiggery with its values of rational planning and central control, its absolute morality, and its sense that progress and betterment was something imposed on the lesser by the better. Bache adhered to all of these values.