CONCEPT
The Republic of Letters
The transnational correspondence network of 17th- and 18th-century European intellectuals — a competitive marketplace of ideas extending beyond national boundaries — that Mokyr identifies as the cultural-institutional precondition for the Industrial Enlightenment.
The Republic of Letters was the transnational community of scholars, natural philosophers, and learned correspondents that developed across early modern Europe — connected by letters, printed publications, scientific societies, and the movement of books and people across national boundaries. Mokyr's A Culture of Growth placed the Republic of Letters at the center of his account of why sustained economic growth began in Europe rather than elsewhere. The network created something new in human history: a marketplace of ideas operating above the level of individual states, in which reputations were made and broken, errors were corrected, and knowledge accumulated through systematic public critique.
In The You On AI Field Guide
The Republic's distinguishing features were its transnational character, its commitment to open publication, and its tolerance of disagreement. A Dutch natural philosopher might correspond with a French mathematician, a German chemist, and an English physicist simultaneously, and each would respond with critiques, refinements, and new questions that no single