XVIIème siècle : courage, les précurseurs !
It’s a tough, tough life, being a researcherPublication, in book or electronic form, is today the logical outcome of all research: it gives meaning to the activities of the researcher and conditions to a great extent professional promotions. Steps forward in science and career advancement thus go hand in hand. The researcher only writes, in our time, to be published. Nothing of the sort, on the other hand, in the 17th century! It was thus possible to be recognised as a great savant without ever having published anything. The distinction between writing and publication is important. On the one hand, distribution could take place without passing through printing: two hundred years after the invention of printing, numerous works still circulated in manuscript form. On the other, it was common practice to only write for a very restricted circle of intimates, to whom one reserved one’s ideas on ‘at risk’ themes, such as the place of the Earth in the Universe. It was under this assumed confidentiality that a number of audacious ideas were spread around. Galileo had his Copernican Letters circulated in this way in 1616. Latin, the ‘English’ of its timeThis development went hand in hand with language upheavals. At the beginning of the century Latin remained the learned language which allowed intellectuals to understand each other from one end of Europe to the other. National idioms would subsequently establish themselves. Various publishing strategies were thus offered to authors. In falling back on Latin, they guaranteed themselves a horizontal international distribution: their texts could be read by all the European savants. In using their national language, they reached vertically a local but more socially diversified readership. In expressing themselves in French, the prestige language, they hoped to be read by a restricted fringe of the European general public. English was not yet the universal language it would later become. The British, proud of the scientific vivacity of their country, published their learned journals in English. But, conscious of the limited impact of their language, they also published a Latin version to reach across the sea. The choice of language could also be conditioned by the deliberate wish to restrict the readership. Latin, which limited the access of the text to the elite, sometimes permitted audacious ideas to be circulated with a certain peace of mind. Imprudent authors who expressed their innovative ideas in a language accessible to the largest number exposed themselves to serious problems. Because if it was dangerous to doubt the traditions, it was all the more so to confide your doubts to the ‘good people.’ |
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