Pierre Gassendi
was not a prolific correspondent, not the sort of intelligencer
one sees in a Peiresc or Mersenne-- he was a working natural philosopher
who maintained a relatively large and diverse network that he maintained
with fair frequency.
As discussed elsewhere on this
website, the identity, location, and extent of Gassendi's extant correspondence
is far from known-- much less do we have a perfect picture of the letters
known to have been sent or received (now presumed lost). Indeed,
there is no scholarly consensus about his manuscript remains or the nature
of his correspondence network. To redress this problem I offer the
following scratchings, however crude, to display what is currently known
about 'Gassendi's Web.' To my knowledge it is the first attempt
to provide-- if not
a 'Big Picture'-- at least a working map of Gassendi's correspondence
network. |