150 Years Ago: The Invention of “Higher Research”

“The École des Hautes Études is a seed that I am planting in the cracked walls of the old Sorbonne; as it grows, it will bring those walls down”, said Victor Duruy just before signing the decree that established EPHE in 1868. His streamlined, inexpensive concept gave him an opportunity to reform an academic world that he considered sclerotic and unable to adapt and respond to new scientific and educational challenges.

The new institution had four sections: I. Mathematics; II. Physics and Chemistry; III. Natural History and Physiology; IV. History and Philology. A fifth section, devoted to Religious Studies, was founded in 1886; a sixth, for Economic and Social Sciences, was created in 1947 before being spun off into an independent institution, EHESS, in 1975. EPHE currently has three sections: Life and Earth Sciences, History and Philology, Religious Studies.
The directors of studies for the first three sections were originally housed in the laboratories of the Sorbonne’s schools of science and medicine, the Muséum, the Collège de France and the École Normale Supérieure, as well as at various locations across France. Beginning in 1901, the fourth and fifth sections found a home at the Sorbonne.

A focus on seminars as a pedagogical tool, an emphasis on “learning by doing” in research, the use of laboratories and personalized instruction: today, these are the hallmarks of any institution that promotes excellence in higher education. But in 1868, that approach was completely innovative. The very expression “higher research,” so commonly used today, was yet to be embodied by any institution.

That is the paradox behind the École Pratique des Hautes Études: during the latter half of the 19th century, it was a laboratory for quite eccentric ideas and methods applied to the most traditional sciences, but those ideas and methods were so widely adopted in later years  – notably at the CNRS after the Second World War – that their roots at EPHE were often forgotten.  

EPHE intends to promote and expand basic research, which is priceless in the sense that you can’t put a price on knowledge.

That singularity is reflected in the institution’s personalized instructional and scientific support and its embrace of an instructional philosophy that focuses on research in the making. EPHE lays claim to being a unique repository of classical knowledge, forgotten languages, major fields of study as well as those nooks and crannies of the academic world –  the “rare and endangered disciplines” that, as we’ve recently come to realize, need to be preserved. At the same time, and without any contradiction, EPHE’s research relies on the most cutting-edge tools in the digital humanities; it is cognizant of big data and the latest challenges in the cognitive sciences; it is attentive to rare emerging disciplines that will give rise to the scientific developments of the future.

EPHE intends to promote and expand basic research, which is priceless in the sense that you can’t put a price on knowledge. And yet it is scanning the horizon for concrete applications that derive from that research, for global challenges in the sciences. It can devote its attention to both ancient systems of thought or cosmogonies and contemporary phenomena of religious “radicalization.” The institutions it has created are devoted to the teaching of both religion and secularism; their study of the coral reefs informs their teaching of both weathering and global warming.

Originally conceived as an institution that transcends walls, EPHE is delighted to announce that, with the Condorcet Campus in Aubervilliers, it will soon find the answer to its infrastructure needs. Through its active participation in the PSL (Université Paris Sciences & Lettres) project, EPHE is joining its fellow institutions in the ecosystem that gave rise to its creation. “Higher research” is both the grande dame wreathed in a bouquet of the traditional sciences, and the young upstart who is plugged into the world around her.

Hubert Bost, President, EPHE