Pritchard, James; From Shipwright To Naval Constructor - Iowa State ...

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The Professionalization of French Naval Shipbuilders teries of the shipbuilding craft. Each master finds his own secrets, claims them to be the best, guards them, and passes them to his sons. Duhamel viewed such methods, inopportunely called the rules and principles of construction, as mechanical and base. They were habitual, gave too much confidence, and were a major obstacle to the advancement of ship construction. Duhamel's textbook deliberately rejects an affirmative tone. "I have always thought," he wrote, that young people must be spurred on to use their mind and incited to acquire sagacity or at least increase what they naturally have: now nothing is so useful for that than the salutary doubt that Descartes advises, discussions that end in indecision and force young people to examine thoroughly the object on which they are working. In a word, I deemed it would be advantageous to put them in a fix from which they can only extricate themselves by reflections that give birth to ideas, ruminations that cause false ideas to be distinguished from true ones, [and] schemes that allow a decision on the choice to be made; ... a fixed fashion makes routine people.80 Duhamel intended to teach his students something different from theoretical inquiry or observation or experiment and certainly not the so-called rules and principles of the shipwrights of old. Duhamel termed his teaching "the theory of [the constructor's] art," which combined trial and error with a search for mechanical principles and employment of mathematical calculations but rejected theory with no firmer foundation than hypothesis.81 To the degree that constructors followed his precepts, they would do honor to their profession and become exempt from the reproaches made to others. The structure of Duhamel's text supported his approach to learning. Each section deals with the several parts of constructing a ship. But nowhere does the author provide an ideal solution to the problems posed in each part. Instead, he presents several solutions. Today's engineers may claim that such a procedure does not differ from modern approaches to engineering. However, such a view ignores the trend toward the mathematization of science that occurred with accelerating rapidity during the 18th century. "Transcendent geometers" continually reduced mechanics to pure equations. The content of science moved ever farther away from the descriptive, ambiguous world of the shipbuilder, filled with limitations and constraints, toward a more extensive use of abstract concepts that 80Ibid., p. viii. 8'Ibid., pp. 322-25. 19
20 James Pritchard mathematics defined in an ever more precise, unambiguous, and universal language of its own.82 Duhamel du Monceau could not move in that direction. His attitude toward shipbuilding is best captured by the term "engineering." Like him, we should refer to naval engineering or the profession of naval architecture, not to the science of naval architecture. For, like engineers, Duhamel knew that there is no perfect ship-only a better one. To quote Fores, "[The engineer's] choices are never wholly rational nor are they backed by all the demonstrative powers of science."83 Duhamel du Monceau might have written the same, but he wrote as follows: "The art consists ... in knowing how to lose a little on the one hand, to gain on the other, or how not to gain as much as possible in one respect, in order not to lose completely other advantages: thus, we must preserve a certain balance; but for that we must know at least approximately what shape a vessel would have to have to give it this or that advantage apart from all the others."84 The successful absorption of mechanics by mathematics rolled over men like Duhamel. Well before the end of the century his ideas had become thoroughly discredited. Yet Duhamel made the key contribution to the professionalization of naval shipwrights. By the mid-18th century, French naval constructors had already ceased to fit traditional categories as craftsmen or workers. The boundaries of their category of social status were both distinct and fluid and becoming more so. But it was Duhamel who fulfilled the core criteria for their occupational role, by providing both formal technical training in which an intellectual component predominated and mastery of a generalized cultural training that included skill (trial and error) as well as understanding. All that remained was to add the institutional means to enforce socially responsible use of such skills.85 The stature of naval constructors also continued to grow despite their limited education and want of manners. Although acknowledging that constructors were very well acquainted with their art and skilled in execution, the intendant of Brest, Gilles Hocquart, thought that none was capable of aiding in the compilation of a planned marine 82See Morris Kline, Mathematics in Western Culture (Oxford [1953] 1980), pp. 240-42. Also, Rene Taton, L'Oeuvre scientifique de Gaspard Monge (Paris, 1951), pp. 146-47, 239-40. For the reaction to this development see C. C. Gillispie, "The Encyclopedie and the Jacobin Philosophy of Science: A Study in Ideas and Consequences," in Critical Problems in the History of Science, ed. Marshall Clagett (Madison, Wisc. [1959] 1962), pp. 255-89. 83Fores (n. 78 above), p. 858. '8Duhamel du Monceau (n. 71 above), p. 313. 85Parsons, "Professions" (n. 49 above), p. 536; see also M. P. Crosland, "The Develop- ment of a Professional Career in Science in France," in The Emergence of Science in Western Europe, ed. Maurice Crosland (London, 1975), p. 139.
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