Republic of Letters

{{Main article |Academy}}

File:Coat_of_arms_of_the_Royal_Society.svg encouraged discourse and debate that led to enlightenment. Their motto Nullius in verba (take nobody's word for it) embodied the spirit of inquiry and scientific investigation]]

The Royal Society primarily promoted science, which was undertaken by wealthy gentlemen acting independently. The Royal Society created its charters and established a system of governance. Its most famous leader was Isaac Newton, president from 1703 until his death in 1727. Other notable members include diarist John Evelyn, writer Thomas Sprat, and scientist Robert Hooke, the Society's first curator of experiments. It played an international role to adjudicate scientific findings, and published the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society edited by Henry Oldenburg.{{sfn|Hunter|2010|pp=34–40}}

The seventeenth century saw new academies open in France,{{sfn|Stroup|1990}} Germany,{{sfn|Evans|1977}} and elsewhere. By 1700 they were found in most major cultural centers.{{sfn|Jacob|2006}}{{Page needed|date=June 2023}}

{{Main article |Salon (gathering)}}

File:Presumed Portrait of Madame Geoffrin.jpg, by Marianne Loir (National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C.)]]

The salons were literary institutions that relied on a new ethic of polite sociability based on hospitality, distinction, and the entertainment of the elite. The salons were open to intellectuals, who used them to find protectors and sponsors and to fashion themselves as 'hommes du monde.' In the salons after 1770 there emerged a radical critique of worldliness, inspired by Rousseau. These radicals denounced the mechanisms of polite sociability and called for a new model of the independent writer, who would address the public and the nation.{{sfn|Lilti|2005a|pp=415–45}}

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{{Main article |Printing press}}

The printing press also played a prominent role in the establishment of a community of scientists who could easily communicate their discoveries through the establishment of widely disseminated journals. Because of the printing press, authorship became more meaningful and profitable. The main reason was that it provided correspondence between the author and the person who owned the printing presses – the publisher. This correspondence allowed the author to have a greater control of its production and distribution.

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File:1665 journal des scavans title.jpg

File:Pierre Bayle.jpg

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File:STEELE Richard.jpg

File:Acta Eruditorum.jpg

Anglo-American historians have turned their attention to the Enlightenment's dissemination and promotion, inquiring into the mechanisms by which it played a role in the collapse of the Ancien Régime.{{sfn|Brockliss|2002|p=6}} This attention to the mechanisms of dissemination and promotion has led historians to debate the importance of the Republic of Letters during the Enlightenment.

In 1994, Dena Goodman published The Republic of Letters: A Cultural History of the French Enlightenment.{{citation |last=Goodman |first=Dena |year=1994 |title=The Republic of Letters: A Cultural History of the French Enlightenment |publisher=Cornell University Press |place=Ithaca, NY & London, England |isbn=9780801429682|url=https://archive.org/details/isbn_081429684/page/n5/mode/2up}}

In 2003, Susan Dalton published Engendering the Republic of Letters: Reconnecting Public and Private Spheres. Dalton supports Dena Goodman's view that women played a role in the Enlightenment.{{sfn|Dalton|2003|p=4}}

In 1995, Anne Goldgar published Impolite Learning: Conduct and Community in the Republic of Letters, 1680–1750. Goldgar argues that, in the transitional period between the 17th century and the Enlightenment, the most important common concern by members of the Republic was their own conduct. In the conception of its own members, ideology, religion, political philosophy, scientific strategy, or any other intellectual or philosophical framework were not as important as their own identity as a community.{{sfn|Brockliss|2002|p=7}}

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{{div col|colwidth=27em}}

• Coffeehouse
• Daniel Roche
• Dictionnaire philosophique
• Encyclopédie
• English coffeehouses in the 17th and 18th centuries
• Robert Darnton
• Science in the Age of Enlightenment
• Societas eruditorum incognitorum in terris Austriacis

{{div col end}}

{{reflist|24em}}

{{refbegin|indent=yes}}

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• {{citation |last=Lambe |first=Patricke |year=1988 |title=Critics and Skeptics in the Seventeenth-Century Republic of Letters | journal=The Harvard Theological Review |volume=81 |issue=3 |pages=271–296 |doi=10.1017/S0017816000010105 |jstor=1509705}}
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• {{citation |last=Mayhew |first=Robert |date=April 2004 |title=British Geography's Republic of Letters: Mapping an Imagined Community, 1600–1800 |journal=Journal of the History of Ideas |volume=65 |number=2 |pages=251–276 |doi=10.1353/jhi.2004.0029 |jstor=3654209 |s2cid=143514543}}
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{{refend}}

• [http://republicofletters.stanford.edu/ Mapping the Republic of Letters, Stanford University Humanities Center]
• [https://culturesofknowledge.history.ox.ac.uk/ Cultures of Knowledge, University of Oxford]

{{DEFAULTSORT:Republic Of Letters}}

Category:Age of Enlightenment