Savante passion : pathos et logos dans les carnets de Roger North (1651-1734)

Abstract

In Early Modern Europe, "truth-to-nature" is the objective of savant atlases which seek the universal in taxons. Pathos is therefore not tolerated within this culture of logos which strongly forbids it on epistemological grounds. However, the scholar's repressed passions survive and manifest themselves in the numerous graphic traces scattered across his or her private notes. Following these clues in the mechanical notebooks of Roger North, an English jurist of the turn of the 18th century well-versed in natural philosophy, I propose to trace the interplay of savant passions. These paper spaces, void of laws and geometry, reveal the desires and pleasures but also the fears and hesitations of the philosopher at work. A pathic knowledge takes shape, figment of a reason moved by passions, a genuine "anxious gay science". Halfway between art and science, I try to sketch here the lineaments of a poetics of Early Modern savant enquiry.