Ideas: A History of Thought and Invention, from Fire to Freud

by Peter Watson

In May 1798 one of the most extraordinary expeditions in the history of ideas set out from Toulon, in France. No fewer than 167 chemists, engineers, biologists, geologists, architects, painters, poets, musicians and doctors were gathered together, referred to as savants by the 38,000 troops also collected in the southern French port. Like the troops, the savants didn’t know where they were headed, for their young commanding officer, Napoleon Bonaparte, had kept the destination secret. The average age of the savants was twenty-five, the youngest fourteen, but there were also well-known figures among the group which included: Pierre-Joseph Redouté, the flower painter, Gratet de Dolomieu, the geologist after whom the Dolomite mountains are named, and Nicholas Conté, a prominent chemist and naturalist.