Some sixty years ago Harcourt Brown declared him 'undeservedly neglected', an astronomer, mathematician, diplomat, and classical scholar 'whose lively mind reflects most of the movements, literary, social and philosophic, of his age.' Three centuries ago, contemporaries seemed equally ebullient. He was 'situated in the very seat of learning', Pierre-Daniel Huet opined, 'a stranger to no kind of erudition', though these kind words were eventually smothered, following Boulliau's death, when he was heralded as 'One of the most universal geniuses of the time.' But long-standing differences of opinion persist about Boulliau and his work. An early Copernican and Keplerian, his planetary theory was, if we follow Delambre, both brilliant but useless, while others, among them Pingré and Koyré, detected subtle genius, delighting in his marriage of Plato's dictum with key elements of Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo. In recent decades a handful of scholars have judged Boulliau's Astronomia philolaica (1645) the most influential book in astronomy between Kepler and Newton.

A competent astronomer and mathematician, Boulliau was, first and foremost, an homme de science. Arguably, he was no great scientist. But the record is clear about one thing: He hobbed-knobbed with the best of them. For the historian, central to Boulliau's legacy is an immense international correspondence, the envy of learned Europe. Here he trafficked in information, news, and gossip--scientific, literary, and political--in quantities that still stupefy. It is an important correspondence. It tells us much about the crucial decades preceding state-sponsored academies and scientific journals, about ideas and individuals, about social structures and daily practices, about the complex communities that gave science shape. But if Boulliau is a touchstone of sorts, if his life reflects the major movements of his day, the task--for the historian and biographer-- is to make his influence intelligible, to make his life coherent.

Yet Boulliau remains a puzzle. In 1934, in his classic Scientific organizations in seventeenth century France (1620-1680), Harcourt Brown saw a figure perfectly placed to tell the story of French erudition, to help account, Brown tells us, for the solution de continuité between Descartes and the Académie des Sciences, to cast light on the crise de conscience that closed the century. A decade later, in Nazi-occupied Paris, René Pintard published Le libertinage érudit (1943). Here Boulliau emerged as an amiable skeptic, one of a number of honnêtes gens and more daring proto-philosophes displaying various shades of skepticism. Though neither dealt with his science, Brown and Pintard both underscored Boulliau's importance in the exchange of ideas, most notably through personal correspondence--not publicly, through the printed book, but privately, as Brown put it, 'under the cloak.' Pintard was equally drawn to the shadows. His massive study, though archive-based, was no less thesis-driven. Arguably anachronistic, it casts its subjects along a spectrum of disbelief and dissimulation that unmistakably foreshadowed Enlightenment. Although admirably argued and brilliantly researched, the Pintard thesis is dead. But the issue here is both less dramatic and more clear. Thanks to the pioneering efforts of Brown and Pintard, Boulliau's importance as érudit and intelligencer is assured. The solution to the puzzle that remains is to use all of the pieces, to join Boulliau the érudit and intelligencer with Boulliau the homme de science.

The present volume, now in French translation, first appeared in 1980 as a Dutch dissertation. It represents a massive undertaking; it displays remarkable archive skills. The 600-page narrative treats Boulliau's life history, travels, and above all, his activities as correspondent. Although it is the most detailed study of Boulliau's life to date, the author eschews the epithets 'exhaustive' and 'definitive' though, given the sheer size of the volume, one wonders at the outset how there could be more. But quickly we learn the self-imposed limit--there will be no attempt to define Boulliau's importance as astronomer or mathematician (p. 9). Indeed, there is little evidence of intellectual life.

The present study is in two parts, the first biographical, the second a detailed discussion of five of Boulliau's correspondents. The biographical narrative is highly detailed. Beyond the chronology of events, the principal organizing theme is the thesis that Boulliau, contra Pintard, was no libertine (neither free-thinker nor non-conformist) in matters of religion, politics, or science. Woven throughout the narrative, the theme results in a tapestry exhibiting no evidence of libertinism; indeed, Boulliau appears less prudent than pusillanimous, a model of norms exemplary of a scrupulous conformism. In the end, where Pintard judged him 'un homme de son temps' [p. 377], here Boulliau emerges 'un homme de transition' (p. 548).

Part Two contains five chapters focusing respectively on Boulliau's epistolary relations with Jacques Dupuy (one of the famous Brothers Dupuy), Nicolaas Heinsius (talented Dutch philologist), J-A Portner (Ratisbon man of affairs), Stanislas Lubienietzki (Polish Socinian, writer on comets), and Johannes Hevelius (Danzig astronomer), a group selected to provide a useful geographic, religious, social, and chronological cross section. Readers of Isis will find this section very useful, interesting for its discussion of epistolary genres.

Over fifty years ago Harcourt Brown pointed the way, providing, he claimed, only an exploration, not a chart, of scientific activity. Others have followed. Boulliau, of course, was only part of his story, and there stills remains a need for more specialized studies--of Adrien Auzout, Pierre Petit, Malchisédec Thévenot, Henry Justel--to which we might easily add a dozen others. The present study of Boulliau is useful and welcome. Throughly researched, rich in detail, it represents the view of a fellow traveler.

Robert A. HATCH
University of Florida