Flash Mob Revolution, Lightning, and the People's Will By Kevin Duong Kevin Duong explores how leading French revolutionaries, in need of an image to represent the all important "will of the people", turned to the thunderbolt — a natural symbol of power and illumination that also signalled the scientific ideals so key to their project. PUBLISHED Jan 10, 2021 Detail from La Liberté Triomphante (1792), showing Liberty brandishing a thunderbolt in one hand and a Phrygian cap on a stick in the other — Source (digital copy not openly licensed). I t is often observed that the French Revolution was a revolution of scientists. Nourished by airy abstractions and heartfelt cries to Jean-Jacques Rousseau, its leaders sought a society grounded, not in God or tradition, but in what Edmund Burke decried as “the conquering empire of light and reason”. To be sure, if we tallied the professional affiliations of the members of the first National Assembly, we would fin...
