Other circles around Paris contemporary with the Mersenne-Cartesian
group became prominent for the history of philosophy: first the so-called
Libertins Érudits in the 1630s through the 1650s, connected to the court.
Immediately after this came the Port-Royal circle of Pascal and Arnauld, from
1655 through the early 1660s, during the height of the struggle between
Jansenists and Jesuits.
A parallel and to some extent derivative structure emerged in England; a
scientific correspondence circle formed in the 1630s around German Protestant
travelers settling at London. This gave rise to the famous Invisible College at
Oxford in the 1640s during the Commonwealth, from which came Boyle’s
famous scientific experiments in the early 1660s. In 1662 its members formed
the Royal Society in London, whose Transactions became the first scientific
periodical. Meanwhile at Cambridge from 1633 to 1660 was an oppositional
Platonist circle of Whichcote, Henry More, and Cudworth; Newton was intel-
lectually initiated by its members early in his life, and Locke connects to it too,
as well as to the other major circles of his generation.
Counting the successor circles across the generations as one, we see six cir-
cles in the great revolutionary period of the mid-1600s: the Platonists and the
cosmopolitan scientific movement in England; a similar scientific-philosophical
movement in Paris, with more extreme tendencies presented by the Port-Royal
group and the Libertins Érudits. Completing the lineup is the Amsterdam
community of religious cosmopolitans (1640–1680s), largely crypto-Jews in
exile from Portugal; they connect not only to Spinoza but also to French
religious and anti-religious factions and to cosmopolitan travelers such as
Locke. Bayle publicized their views by founding Nouvelles de la République
des Lettres in 1684.
In the early 1700s the only notable circles were in London, organized
around the emerging publishing business: the Whig literary circle of Addison
and Steele and, more important, the Tory literary circle of Pope, Bolingbroke,
and Chesterfield. Through Swift the latter circle connected with Berkeley; and
its members hosted and inspired the young French visitors Montesquieu and
Voltaire in the 1720s.
In the mid-1700s Paris had another major circle: the Encyclopedists (1745–
1772), whose core was a new kind of publishing enterprise; contact with it
inspired Rousseau and the wealthy Helvétius. During the 1770s and 1780s,
the group re-formed at Auteuil at the estate of Mme. Helvétius, recruiting
Condorcet, Cabanis, and Destutt de Tracy as well as scientific stars such as
Lavoisier and Laplace. It was especially active after 1792 as a refuge from the
Revolutionary period of the Terror. In the late 1790s and early 1800s, many
of the group were in the Chamber of Deputies or the Senate, forming a
moderate monarchist–anti-religious faction called the Idéologues. Its protégés
included Comte and Maine de Biran.
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