Henk Nellen and Charles van den Heuvel
The Nature of Scholarly Communication and Networks of Confidentiality
This casus investigates aspects of the nature of scholarly communication in the 17th century such as authority, originality and, in particular, the question of openness and confidentiality of the letters.
It is doubtful whether all letters exchanged between members of seventeenth-century intellectual networks were strictly confidential. Hugo Grotius, for instance, dashed off many letters to his family, friends, or fellow-politicians that were meant to be read by others as well, in any case by those who were part of the recipient’s inner circle. On the other hand, time and again Grotius’ correspondence makes clear that it was simply not done to procure a wide audience with access to the information that was exchanged – whether through publication or via handwritten copies – without the express approval of the letter writer. In general, a scholar who was averse of seeing any part of his reports, news and gossip divulged among outsiders, had to wait patiently until he could meet his friends in person, so as to be able to remain in control of the communication process. In this way the status of the letter ranks between the openness of the scholarly publication and the strict confidentiality of the private conversation. On the basis of certain fragments, located in letters that pertain to the (tacitly accepted) codes of confidentiality and openness, it might be possible to come across other letters that mention or allude to the confidentiality of epistolary contacts. In this way we hope to assess in greater detail the particular status of the letter as a means of communication posited between the official document and the report of a private conversation. One of the hypotheses that we will put to the test is that there is a correlation between networks of confidentiality and people sharing the same religious denominations.
This casus is a first exploration of future research that focuses on the implications of the shift from the letter to the periodical. Whereas in the European scholarly community of the 17th century letters were by far the most important means of communication, from the 1660s onwards this one-to-one exchange of knowledge was gradually complemented via a more public form of scholarly communication in learned periodicals. Senders and recipients of letters knew each other directly or at least indirectly via intermediate scholars and could therefore not only create for themselves a picture of the content of the letter, but also of its authority and confidentiality. Publishers and editors of periodicals, when they gradually went beyond extracting recently published works, had to deal with often less specialized audiences but still had to upkeep the credibility of the content of the presented scholarly information. Sharing content with specialists to establish its authenticity and authority also implied sharing confidentiality.
I. Hugo Grotius
First, we searched the paper edition of Grotius’ correspondence (Briefwisseling van Hugo Grotius, 17 vols, The Hague 1928-2001) for words and expressions pertaining to confidentiality. We came across the following fragments:
Epistola illa de studiorum ratione non est generalis, sed Maurerii aetati ac negotiis accommodata. Quare ex editione quis fructus sit futurus, non intelligo. Et tamen exempla quoquoversum cursitant.
Interea quas a me tenes litteras tibi habe et Vulcano sacrifica.
Atque hoc quidem facio ea spe, quinimo fiducia, uti meas ubi legeris Vulcano tradas
Non est quod te rogem, ne foras eliminentur quae hic temere effutio; satis me tacente intelligis non esse proferenda, nec ulli concredenda nisi Vulcano nostro, vel si mavis Veneris marito.
‘t Valt my verdryetigh hyer niemant te vinden, waermede ick in volcomen vertrouwen magh communiceren. God gave dat U.E. gelegentheyt toeliet eens over te comen om op alle dese saecken ende andere saecken my te hooren ende raed te geven, soo voor myne familie als voor het gemeene beste, ‘t welck my zeer diep staet geschreven in het hart. Vulcano haec epistola sacrator.
Non est hic cuicum loquar, nisi extra curiam quae debebat esse mihi matria non noverca. itaque sum prolixior ubi tecum loquor. Vale amicorum decus. 7 Febr. 1614. Lectas Vulcano.
Ista quam inclusam mitto antehac displicuit, sed indignus mihi visus sum dignissimis tuis si nihil omnino rescriberem. Atque hoc quidem facio ea spe, quinimo fiducia, uti meas ubi legeris Vulcano tradas.
Brand desen brieff
Nimirum non desinunt curiosi homines nostro literarum commercio insidiari, cum tamen nihil sit in illis praeter studium literarum, res domesticas et siquid publici bona vota.
Sed nescio cur epistolam principis nulla sane necessitate adigente adiungere libuerit. Videtur enim aliqua iis fieri iniuria, quorum litterae se insciis et viventibus vulgantur. Reigersbergius etiam aegre fert nomen suum in ista epistola extare ideoque omnino editionem dissuasurus erat.
Videtur enim aliqua iis fieri iniuria, quorum litterae se insciis et viventibus vulgantur. Reigersbergius etiam aegre fert nomen suum in ista epistola extare ideoque omnino editionem dissuasurus erat.
Words like: fiducia, familiaris, epistola, inter nos, jargon, geheim, secreet, secretum, sodalitas, tectus, tacitus, vertrouwelijkheid
Son Altesse a voulu voir la lettre, et a jugé qu’elle est imprimé mal à propos, et avec malice
Je ne croy qu’il n’a pas fort prudemment faict de publier cette lettre, quoy qu’elle n’ait rien d’important
1.
Next, we inserted “inter nos” AND “epistola” in ‘full text research’: 20 results; 7 letters were more or less related to the confidential information conveyed in these letters:
2.
Then, we tested all kinds of words and combinations of words taken from the letter-fragments above, but these tests did not yield any new letters with express references to confidential information.
3.
We also inserted a whole fragment:
‘t Valt my verdryetigh hyer niemant te vinden, waermede ick in volcomen vertrouwen magh communiceren. God gave dat U.E. gelegentheyt toeliet eens over te comen om op alle dese saecken ende andere saecken my te hooren ende raed te geven, soo voor myne familie als voor het gemeene beste, ‘t welck my zeer diep staet geschreven in het hart. Vulcano haec epistola sacrator.
No results
4.
Another phrase inserted:
nec enim opus est quemvis nosse quae inter nos agitantur
No relevant results
5.
epistola communicatio librement liberté ecrire inter nos entre nous
No relevant results
6.
fiducia, familiaris, epistola, inter nos, jargon, geheim, secreet, secretum, sodalitas, tectus, tacitus, vertrouwelijkheid
No relevant results
II. Marin Mersenne
We wanted to know whether the terms that Grotius used to describe aspects of confidentiality were representative for other correspondences of the 17th century as well. To this end we searched for keywords related to confidentiality in another scholarly correspondence that was not included in the ePistolarium, the letters to and from Marin Mersenne: Correspondance du P. Marin Mersenne, religieux minime, ed. C. de Waard et al., 17 vols, Paris 1932-1988.
Similarity search, paragraphic topic model
1.
de trop libre en mes lettres
accourciray ma liberté
franchise
No results
2.
liberté, lettres, franchise, censure
No results
3.
cacher franchise lettres intus et foris entre nous inter nos, liberté osois écrire
These keywords led to a letter that was unknown to us:
Descartes to Mersenne, 15 May 1634
La perte des lettres que je vous avais écrites vers la fin du mois de novembre, me fait croire qu’elles ont été retenues exprès par quelque curieux, qui a trouvé moyen de les tirer du messager et qui savait peut-être que j’avais eu dessein de vous envoyer mon Traité environ ce temps-là, en sorte que, si je l’eusse envoyé, il aurait été en grand hasard d’être perdu. Il me souvient aussi que j’avais manqué auparavant de recevoir 4 ou 5 de vos lettres, ce qui nous doit avertir de ne rien écrire que nous ne veuillons bien que tout le monde sache, et en cas que nos lettres fussent de quelque importance, il faudrait les envoyer dans le paquet d’un marchand, car ceux qui les retiennent connaissent sans doute nos écritures. Je demeure maintenant ici à Amsterdam, d’où j’aurai moyen de recevoir plus souvent et peut-être plus sûrement de vos nouvelles, que lorsque j’étais à Deventer; et je vous prie, sitôt que vous aurez reçu celles-ci, de vouloir prendre la peine de me faire réponse, afin que je sache si elles n’auront point été perdues.
4.
Another remark conveying the idea of confidentiality:
‘Si vous communiquez ces articles à vos amis, il n’est pas à propos que l’on sache qui les a envoyez’
Similarity research results in five letters that do not contain any relevant material
5.
The main theme in Mersenne, Correspondance vols. XIII-XVI (see vol. XVII, p. 80) is the (international) debate on the vacuum (leegte, vacuus, vacuum), in direct relation to contemporary scientific research focused on the thermometer. Key words are for example:
vide (Frans), tube, mercure, air vif argent, tuyau, tuyaux, cylindre, vesica (blaas), vessie, vesica, vacui, vacuus, vacuum experimentis, aer subtilis, aether, mercurii, mercurio, hermetice clausum, tubum vitreum, tubus, tubum
Similarity search yielded six letters on this particular topic:
6.
After that we inserted a group of interrelated keywords:
vide, vacuus,tube, tuyau, tuyaux, vacui, vacuum, experimentis, aer
The result was interesting: several letters on the same theme.
Conclusion
A provisional conclusion: the proposed research into the theme of confidentiality does not lead to significant results. In all probability, the reason for this is that the concept ‘confidentiality’ lies too far hidden in between the lines, ‘underneath the text’. On the other hand, insertion of (chains of) words related to a more palpable, practical theme yields some remarkable results. In our view, it would be wrong to assume that confidentiality was exceptional for seventeenth-century letter writers and, in the case of Grotius, has to be explained by referring to his status of controversial writer and political exile. On the contrary, self-censure and secrecy are common features of many seventeenth-century correspondences and these features certainly apply to the letters written by Constantijn Huygens, Marin Mersenne and René Descartes. Of course, these scholars might have expressed the concept ‘confidentiality’ with different words, but the implication is that they cannot be retrieved yet in a convincing way through similarity search. The fact that our corpus comprises too few letters (and that letters express these concepts more implicitly) is the most likely explanation for the limited surplus of similarity search in this case. The experiment has to be run again, once we have assembled far more letters in our ePistolarium-corpus.