This study illustrates the significance of Jean-Jacques Dortous de Mairan’s networking in the spread of Enlightenment thought. It focuses primarily on the unpublished correspondence between Mairan and the Geneva scientists, Firmin Abauzit, Gabriel Cramer, Jean Jallabert and Charles Bonnet. Mairan was an assiduous correspondent whose letters reveal the progress of scientific thought in the first three quarters of the eighteenth century. Despite the high regard in which of his contemporaries, he has been, until recently, relatively neglected by Enlightenment scholars. This is the first...

The Traite des systemes is a milestone in the intellectual history of the eighteenth century. This is a study of its content, structure, sources and importance. It includes a discussion of Condillac's analysis of good and bad systems, the adequacy of his knowledge and under standing of the speculative metaphysics of the preceding century, the effectiveness of his method of attack on seventeenth-century metaphysical systems, his conception of empirical and scientific method, and in particular his understanding of the role of hypotheses, his application of the Newtonian scientific method to...