Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-jr42d Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-15T17:15:03.749Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Ideal and Reality of the Republic of Letters in the Enlightenment

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

Lorraine Daston
Lorraine Daston
Affiliation:
Institut für WissenschaftsgeschichteUniversität Göttingen
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The Republic of Letters of the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries teaches us two lessons about style in science. First, the bearer of style—individual, nation, institution, religious group, region, class—depends crucially on historical context. When the organization and values of intellectual life are self-consciously cosmopolitan, and when allegiances to other entities (e.g., Protestant versus Catholic, or urban versus rural) are culturally more compelling than those to the nation-state, distinctively national styles are far to seek. This was largely the case for the Republic of Letters, that immaterial (it lacked location, formal administration, and brick and mortar) but nonetheless real (it exercised dominion over thoughts and deeds) realm among the sovereign states of the Enlightenment. Second, that form of objectivity which made science seem so curiously detached from scientists, and therefore so apparently unmarked by style at any level, also has a history. The unremitting emphasis on impartial criticism and evaluation within the Republic of Letters encouraged its citizens to distance themselves first from friends and family, then from compatriots and contemporaries, and finally, in the early nineteenth century, from themselves as well. Although this psychological process of estrangement and ultimately of self-estrangement may seldom have been completely realized, the striving was genuine and constitutes part of the moral history of objectivity.

Type
Article
Information
Science in Context , Volume 4 , Issue 2 , Autumn 1991 , pp. 367 - 386
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1991

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Barnes, Annie. 1938. Jean Le Clerc (1657–1736) et la République des Lettres. Paris: Librairie Droz.Google Scholar
Barrière, P. 1951. L'Académie de Bordeaux: Centre de culture internationale au XVIIIe siècle (1712–1792). Bordeaux and Paris: Editions Bière.Google Scholar
Barrière, P. 1952. “La Vie académique au XVIIIe siècle d'après un manuscrit du Président de Ruffey.” Revue d'histoire littéraire de la France 52:11–24.Google Scholar
Bayle, Pierre. 1684. “Préface.” Nouvelles de la République des Lettres.Google Scholar
Bayle, Pierre. [1697] 1820. “Catius.” Dictionnaire historique et critique, Vol. 4. Paris.Google Scholar
Beetz, Manfred. 1987. “Der anständige Gelehrte.” In Neumeister and Wiedemann 1987, part 1, 157–58.Google Scholar
Birn, Raymond. 1965. “Le Journal des Savants sous l'Ancien Régime.” Journal des savants. Troisième Centenaire 1665–1965, 15–35.Google Scholar
d'Alembert, Jean. 1759a. “Discours préliminaire de l'Encyclopédie.” In Mélanges de littérature, d'histoire et de philosophie, nouv. ed., Vol. 1. Amsterdam.Google Scholar
d'Alembert, Jean. 1759b. “Essai sur la société des gens de lettres et des grands, sur la réputation, sur les mécènes et les récompenses littéraires.” In Mélanges de littérature, d'histoire et de philosophie, nouv. ed., Vol. 1. Amsterdam.Google Scholar
d'Alembert, Jean. 1967. “Réflexions sur l'état présent de la République des Lettres pour l'article Gens de Lettres.” In Oeuvres et correspondences inédites de d'Alembert, edited by Charles, Henry. Geneva: Slatkine Reprints.Google Scholar
Daston, Lorraine. 1990. “Scientific Neutrality and Nationalism under Napoleon.” In Solomon's House Revisited, edited by Frängsmyr., T. New York: Science History, 95–119.Google Scholar
Daston, Lorraine, and Peter, Galison. Forthcoming. “The Image of Objectivity.” Representations.Google Scholar
Delorme, Suzanne. 1937. “La Vie scientifique à l'époque de Fontenelle d'après les éloges des savants.” Archeion 19:217–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
De Moivre, Abraham. 1714–1716. “A Ready Description and Quadrature of a Curve of the Third Order….” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London 29:329–31.Google Scholar
Duclos, Charles. 1784. Considérations sur les moeurs de ce siècle. London.Google Scholar
Faivre, Jean-Paul. 1966. “Savants et navigateurs: Un aspect de la coopération internationale entre 1750 et 1840.” Cahiers d'histoire mondiale 10:98–124.Google Scholar
Formey, J. H. S. 1769. “Considérations sur ce qu'on peut regarder aujourd'hui comme le but principal des académies, et comme leur effet le plus avantageux.” Histoire de l'Académie royale des Sciences et Belles-Lettres. Année 1767. Berlin.Google Scholar
Hahn, Roger. 1971. Anatomy of a Scientific Institution: The Paris Academy of Sciences, 1666–1803. Berkeley: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hall, A. Rupert. 1980. Philosophers at War: The Quarrel Between Newton and Leibniz. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hans, Nicholas. 1953. “UNESCO of the Eighteenth Century: La Loge des Neuf Soeurs and Its Venerable Master Benjamin Franklin.” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 97:513–24.Google Scholar
Herder, Johann Gottfried. [1780] 1893. “Vom Einfluss der Regierung auf die Wissenschaften, und der Wissenschaften auf die Regierung.” In Sämmtliche Werke, Vol. 9, edited by Supan, Bernhard, 307–408. Berlin.Google Scholar
Histoire de la République des Lettres et Arts en France. Année 1779. 1780. Amsterdam.Google Scholar
Histoire de la République des Lettres et Arts en France. Année 1780. 1781. Amsterdam.Google Scholar
Jacquot, Jean, 1953. Le Naturaliste Sir Hans Sloane et les échanges scientifiques entre la France et l'Angleterre, Paris: Palais de la Découverte.Google Scholar
Kirchstein, Max, 1928. Klopstocks Deutsche Gelehrtenrepublik. Berlin and Leipzig: Walter de Gruyter.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lalande, Joseph-Jérome. 1752. “Discours.” Histoire de l'Académie royale des Sciences et Belles-Lettres, Année 1750. Berlin.Google Scholar
Leibniz, G. W. [1875] 1969. Oeuvres de Leibniz, edited by de Careil., Louis Alexandre Foucher Hildesheim: Georg Olms.Google Scholar
Leibniz, G. W. [1875] 1969a. “Academie von Sachsen.” In Leibniz [1875] 1969, 7:227.Google Scholar
Leibniz, G. W. [1875] 1969b. “Bedencken von Aufrichtung einer Academie oder Societat in Teutschland zu aufnehmen der Künste und Wissenschaften.” In Leibniz [1875] 1969, 7:64–77.Google Scholar
Leibniz, G. W. [1875] 1969c. “Plan zu einer deutschliebbenden Genossenschaft.” In Leibniz [1875] 1969, 7:390–91.Google Scholar
Leibniz, G. W.[1875] 1969d. “Specimen einiger Puncte, darinn Moskau denen Scienzen beförderlich seyn köndte.” In Leibniz [1875] 1969, 7:396.Google Scholar
[Lexell, Anders] 1957. “L'Académie royale des Sciences en 1780 vue par l'astronome suédois Lexell (1740–1784).” Revue d'histoire des sciences 10:148–66.Google Scholar
[Maupertuis, Pierre Louis Moreau de 1752. “Réponse de M. de Maupertuis.” Histoire de l'Académie royale des Sciences et Belles-Lettres. Année 1750. Berlin.Google Scholar
McClellan, James E. III. 1979. “The scientific press in transition: Rozier's Journal and the scientific societies in the 1770s.” Annals of Science 36:425–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McClellan, James E. III. 1985. Science Reorganized: Scientific Societies in the Eighteenth Century. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Maindron, Ernest, 1881. Les Fondations de prix à l'Académie des Sciences. Paris: Gauthier-Villars.Google Scholar
MontesquieuCharles de Secondat, de Charles de Secondat, de. [1748] 1945. De l'Esprit des lois. Edited by Truc., G. Paris: Garnier.Google Scholar
Neumeister, Sebastien, and Conrad, Wiedemann, eds. 1987. Res Publica Litteraria: Die Institutionen der Gelehrsamkeit in der frühen Neuzeit. Wolfenbüttler Arbeiten zur Barockforschung, Vol. 14, two parts. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz.Google Scholar
Pearson, Karl. 1892. The Grammar of Science. London: Walter Scott.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Roche, Daniel. 1978. Le Siècle des lumières en province. Académies et académiciens provinciaux, 1680–1789, 2 vols. Paris and The Hague: Mouton.Google Scholar
Rochot, Bernard. 1966. “Le P. Mersenne et les relations intellectuelles dans l'Europe du XVIIe siècle.” Cahiers d'histoire mondiale 10:55–73.Google Scholar
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. [1755] 1950. “Discourse on Inequality.” In The Social Contract and Discourses, edited by Cole., G. D. H. New York: Dutton.Google Scholar
Schaffer, Simon. 1988. “Astronomers Mark Time.” Science in Context 2:115–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shapin, Steven. 1987. “Essay Review of The Correspondence of Henry Oldenburg.” Isis 78:417–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, Adam. [1759] 1976. The Theory of the Moral Sentiments, edited by Raphael, D. D. and Macfie., A. L. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Swijtink, Zeno J. 1987. “The Objectification of Measurement.” In The Probabilistic Revolution, edited by Krüger, Lorenz et al. Vol. 1: Ideas in History, 261–85. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Tourneaux, Maurice. 1901. “Un projet d'encouragement aux lettres et aux sciences sous Louis XVI.” Revue d'histoire littéraire de la France 8:281–311.Google Scholar
Ultée, Maarten, 1987. “Res Publica Litteraria and War, 1680–1715.” In Neumeister and Wiedemann 1987, part 2.Google Scholar
Voltaire, François Marie Arouet. 1733. Letters Concerning the English Nation. London.Google Scholar
Warnke, Martin. 1987. “Das Bild des Gelehrten im 17 Jahrhundert.” In Neumeister and Wiedemann 1987, part 1.Google Scholar
Woolf, Harry. 1959. The Transits of Venus: A Study of Eighteenth-Century Science. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Yeo, Richard. 1986. “Scientific Methods and the Rhetoric of Science in Britain, 1830–1917.” In The Politics and Rhetoric of Scientific Method, edited by Schuster, J. A. and Richard, Yeo, 259–97. Dordrecht: Reidel.CrossRefGoogle Scholar