A Company of Scientists. Botany, Patronage and Community at the Seventeenth-Century Parisian Royal Academy of Sciences. 1990. IV, 387 p. gr8vo. Cloth.

Contents (main headings): The Setting (Portrait of an Institution)/ The Institution and Its Patronage (Members and Protectors/ Models for a Company of Scientists/ The Material Benefits of Membership: Pensions and Quarters/ Chemical and Mechanical Explanation of Physiological Processes/ The New Instruments and Botany)/ The Academy and the Larger Community (Medical Motivations and Social Responsibility/ Scientific Paris at the End of the Century/ Academicians and the Larger Scientific Community)/ The Effects of Patronage (The Academy as an Instrument of the Crown/ Research Subventions and Ministerial Control)/ Botanical Research at the Academy (The Natural History of Plants: Rival Conceptions/ Justifying the Chemical Analysis of Plants/ Ministerial Intervention and an Unexpected Outcome/ Analogical Reasoning: The Model/ Analogical Reasoning: The Theory)/ Appendix: The Record of Expenditure, 1666-1699/ Notes/ Bibliography/ Index.