It’s a tough, tough life, being a researcher

Publication, 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.

Publication was nevertheless acknowledged as an effective means of establishing intellectual paternity. Knowing that the problem of the vacuum was in fashion and was provoking a certain competition amongst savants, Pascal hastened to publish the result of his experiments. On the other hand Newton would pay for his obstinate refusal to make his first works public. In the context of the controversy which saw him clash with Leibniz over infinitesimal calculus, he could not lean, unlike his adversary, on printed material attesting his paternity.

The manuscript is a fragile support. Descartes’ oeuvre almost disappeared during the shipwreck of the ship which was bringing from Sweden the chest containing the precious documents. To ensure the permanence and the distribution of manuscript works, the savants did not balk at spending long hours recopying by hand passages of treatises written by illustrious colleagues. Important works by Spinoza, Pascal and Descartes thus owe their preservation to the indefatigable pen of Leibniz! On the other hand, certain copyists acted as forgers, not hesitating to distort or even remove passages which displeased them in the works they were responsible for. But there you have it: the printed book is expensive. A printed copy of a weighty manuscript cost the equivalent of one week’s wage for the average artisan, and the majority of savants thus did not have the means to build up a library for themselves.

In exchange for their manuscripts the authors who, despite everything, attempted the adventure, received copies of their own work from their publisher: this was often their sole payment. These copies were given to colleagues who, where possible, reciprocated with their own works. Publications were habitually presented by a dedicatory letter which dedicated the work to an important person whose praises were sung and who, in exchange for this literary consecration, granted the author protection and a sum of money. The process had a strategic importance in the sense that only frequenting the powerful could give access to the sinecures which the savants sought after. The shift to printed material was nevertheless a dangerous step, in the sense that it depended on typographical workers who sometimes did not even know the author’s language. The savants thus closely supervised the tasks carried out by the workshop charged with printing their work.

The learned journals which appeared in France, England and the Germanic Empire were at first generalist, covering all the fields of knowledge. Specialisation would follow, in the same way as the initial attempts at popularising knowledge. Women, the uneducated beings par excellence according to the spirit of the times, were the subject of particular attention on the part of the sowers of new ideas.

Latin, the ‘English’ of its time

This 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.’