Friendship in early Modern Philosophy and Science

Abstract

It is now well accepted that 'collaboration' and 'network' are keywords in academic research management, in both the humanities and the sciences. This collection of articles looks at some aspects of the deep history of these notions, focusing on the ways in which collaborative effort was conceived in the natural and political sciences, philosophy, and the creative arts in early modern Europe (c. 1550–1750). In particular, we restore the idea of friendship as fundamental to the ways in which collaboration was imagined and conducted. In each of the texts and contexts examined here, a claim is made for friendship as a crucial aspect of intellectual inquiry. Contributors have aimed to take this claim seriously, and to weigh, variously, the importance of a rhetoric of intimacy within scholarly networks, the relationship between friend and stranger in facilitating intellectual dialogue, the gendered nature of sociability in the learned world, and the circumstances that could render friendship both a necessary and a fraught conduit for cultural exchange.