Intelligencers, Cliques and Stars in the Spread of Seventeenth-Century Cartesianism

This paper examines the dissemination of Cartesianism in the 17th
century by studying the networks of authors in the field of natural
philosophy. Key figures who spread knowledge and innovated the
field are identified and contextualized. Furthermore, the network
analysis shows how different ways of thinking coexisted within the
social networks of early modern natural philosophers. To achieve
this methodologically, originally bipartite networks were projected
into author-to-author networks that were divided into time slices.
Measurements of centrality and assortativity were used to determine
prominence and diversity, which were complemented and refined with
close reading. The findings reveal not only cliques of geographically
connected authors, but also an overall highly connected field.
Additionally, assortativity indicates a moderate tendency toward
homophily in the authors’ connections to others within the same
philosophical tradition. The study furthermore identifies that central
authors were predominantly eclectic or Cartesian, suggesting that
Cartesianism was driven by such individuals in structurally wellconnected positions.