Science was also enormously popular among the French nobility, and fashionablesociety flocked to demonstrations such as Nicolas Lemery's display representing an erupting volcano.
The purpose of scientists was basically to offer entertainment to fashionablesociety, and academicians delighted in amazing audiences with demonstrations of the universal laws of nature.
The wealthy seem to get tangled in the net of their own anxiety by worrying that, at any moment, they might be dropped unceremoniously from the ranks of fashionablesociety.