Contents -- List of Illustrations -- 1.1. Frontispiece to Denis Diderot and Jean d'Alembert's Encyclopédie, ou, Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers (1751-72) -- 2.1. Portrait of Nicholas Saunderson (1682-1739), Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge -- 2.2 and 2.3. A cataract operation, from Robert James, Dictionnaire universel de la médecine (1746- 48) -- 2.4. Plate from Nollet's Leçons de physique expérimentale, 5th ed. (1759-66) representing a geometrical approach to vision -- 2.5. Jean-Baptiste Greuze's L'Aveugle trompé (1755) -- 2.6. Figure of a blind man seeing with sticks, from Diderot's Lettre sur les aveugles (1749) -- 2.7. Descartes's illustration of the analogy between vision and a blind man's use of canes, from Descartes, La Dioptrique (1637) -- 3.1. Illustration of the conservation of charge in a Leyden jar, from David Colden, "Remarks on the abbé Nollet's Letters on Electricity" (1751) -- 3.2 and 3.3. Nollet's effluences and affluences, as pictured in his Essai sur l'électricité des corps, 2nd ed. (1750) -- 3.4. Franklin's industrious cork ball, equalizing the charge on Leyden jar, from Franklin, Experiments and Observations on Electricity (1751) -- 4.1. Marguerite Gérard's 1779 etching To the Genius of Franklin, after Jean-Honoré Fragonard, with Turgot's epigram of Franklin beneath it -- 4.2. Anonymous Revolution-era engraving representing the peasantry crushed under the weight of the taille, the corvée, and other taxes -- 4.3. Revolution-era cartoon entitled "La Chute en Masse, Ainsi L'Etincelle Electrique de la Liberté, renversera tous les Trônes des Brigands Couronnés" -- 5.1. Depiction of a lightning conductor, from Beyer, Aux amateurs de physique (1809) -- 5.2. Pierre Roch Vigneron's portrait of Robespierre, after Adélaïde Labille-Guiard's 1790 painting.

5.3. Lightning strikes the Campanile of San Marco, Venice, 23 April 1745. From Figuier, Les Merveilles de la science (1870) -- 5.4. Rioting in Saint-Omer over Vissery's lightning rod. From Figuier, Les Merveilles de la science (1870) -- 5.5. Lightning rod hat (1778), from Figuier, Les Merveilles de la science (1870) -- 5.6. Lightning rod umbrella designed by Barbeu-Dubourg, from Figuier, Les Merveilles de la science (1870) -- 5.7. The accidental death of Georg Wilhelm Richmann, from Figuier, Les Merveilles de la science (1870) -- 5.8. First test of the power of points as applied to lightning, at Marly-la-Ville, 10 May 1752, from Figuier, Les Merveilles de la science (1870) -- 6.1. Cartoon depicting the investigation of mesmerism, entitled Le Magnétisme dévoilé -- 6.2. A paralytic being cured by an electrical generator, from the abbé Sans, Guérison de la paralysie (1772) -- 6.3 and 6.4. Electrical amusements from the repertoire of William Watson, from his Expériences et observations . . . [sur] l'électricité (1748) -- 6.5 and 6.6. Scenes from Nollet's public lectures, from his Leçons de physique expérimentale, 5th ed. (1759), and Essai sur l'électricité des corps, 2nd ed. (1750) -- 6.7 and 6.8. Scenes of mesmeric séances -- 7.1. Table of correspondences between old and new chemical names, from Guyton de Morveau et al., Méthode de nomenclature chimique (1787) -- 7.2. Revolutionary-era engraving on the use of the new metric system -- 7.3. Jacques-Louis David's Portrait de Monsieur Lavoisier et sa femme (1788) -- 7.4. Joseph Wright of Derby's Experiment on a Bird in the Airpump (1768) -- 7.5. Emile and Jean-Jacques find their way home from the woods, illustration by Moreau le Jeune -- 7.6. Revolution-era cartoon caricaturing Jean-Sylvain Bailly -- 7.7. "A Revolutionary Committee under the Terror," anonymous engraving after Aléxandre- Evariste Fragonard.

7.8. "The Arrest of Lavoisier," engraving by Jean Duplessi-Bertaux -- 7.9. Anonymous anti-Revolutionary engravings entitled The Patriotic Calculator -- 8.1. Sleeping Harvester representing Messidor ( June-July) from the Revolutionary calendar -- Acknowledgments -- List of Abbreviations -- One: Introduction: Sensibility and Enlightenment Science -- Two: The Blind and the Mathematically Inclined -- Three: Poor Richard's Leyden Jar -- Four: From Electricity to Economy -- Five: The Lawyer and the Lightning Rod -- Six: The Mesmerism Investigation and the Crisis of Sensibilist Science -- Seven: Languages of Science and Revolution -- Eight: Conclusion: The Legacy of the Sentimental Empiricists -- Bibliography -- Index.