T HERE IS A STRONG TRADITION of declinist literature in the history of science, most of it focused on England and France in the nineteenth century. Charles Babbage's Reflections on the Decline of Science in England (1830) originated the tradition, registering a widespread feeling among English scientists that English science was in decline, especially in comparison to recent French achievements in science and mathematics. By the 1860s, French scientists had joined their English neighbors in fearing national inferiority, now in comparison to the Germans.1 Claude Bernard (1867), Louis Pasteur (1868), and Adolphe Wurtz (1870) wrote detailed critical reports on the state of French science, claiming that this decline had been underway since 1830 when, as Emile Aglave put it, France's "scepter" in science had last been held "without contest."2 The rhetoric of scientific decline has continued to flourish in discussions of