How 18th-Century Writers Created The Genre Of Popular Science
Not only did the book pave the way for other natural philosophers (the word “scientist” wasn’t coined until 1834), it inspired an entirely new genre of writing: popular science. Researchers Johanthan Topham and Simon Burrows even created a database for 18th-century Swiss publisher Société Typographique de Neuchatel that reveals tens of thousands of popular science books written in French that were purchased across Europe—everywhere from the United Kingdom to Russia. In addition to Fontenelle, other science writers of the Enlightenment era include Émilie du Châtelet (who translated Newton’s work into French), chemist Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier (who created a system to identify chemicals) and Nicolas de Condorcet (who argued for the use of scientific reasoning in democratic governance).
Source: www.smithsonianmag.com