Networks of Enlightenment

This volume explores the centrality of social networks to the culture and identity of the Enlightenment. An individual in eighteenth-century Europe, no matter how intellectually engaged, simply could not take part in the Enlightenment on his or her own. Rather, one participated in one or more social networks, which informed the experiences and identities of their participants -- and thereby made up the social infrastructure of the Enlightenment. The essays in this volume offer fresh perspectives by drawing upon metadata captured from recently digitized correspondences of major Enlightenment figures and then mapping, conceptually as well as literally, the philosophes as "nodes" of complex and dynamic networks. These essays thereby explore with unprecedented detail the social, linguistic, geographic and institutional configurations of the Enlightenment.

This digital edition offers readers the full-text Introduction, Table of Contents and chapter summaries, as well as high-resolution versions of all figures and data visualizations which appear in the printed text.