Friendship and Rivalry in Science and Scholarship: Pierre-Daniel Huet and the Académies de Caen
An informed engagement in a wide variety of advanced intellectual pursuits was entirely normal in the early modern period; less predictable, though, were the crucial dynamics of interpersonal relationships. Uniquely in seventeenth-century France, Caen saw the foundation of two separate learned societies, the principal Académie de Caen and the smaller but distinct Académie de physique. The latter was also unique: inspired by the Royal Society of London and founded well before the Parisian Académie des sciences, it gained royal recognition and finance in 1668 before failing soon after 1672. In this essay, these remarkable events are reconsidered in the light of the individuals involved, especially the dominant personality of the strong-minded polymath Pierre-Daniel Huet, and their relationships. Based on primary documents that have been unstudied or misinterpreted, it serves as a case-study of the complex ways in which intellectual life in France operated in practice during the later seventeenth century.