ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the narratives constructed by the exchange of letters in the eighteenth-century scientific community, and how that community placed just as much emphasis on the continuity of communication as they did the scientific content. The relationship between narrative and the "conversations" of the eighteenth-century scientific community illuminates how authors, characters, and plots were intertwined. Each letter-writer served as an author of the narrative. Narratives among scientific practitioners often had common elements, particularly during the Seven Years' War. During the mid-eighteenth century, practitioners of science in Britain and America, as well as parts of continental Europe, formed a letter-writing, or epistolary, network in order to facilitate the communication of knowledge. Educated members of the scientific community were, more often than not, physicians. In most cases, autodidacts received praise from those who had received an advanced education, but not always.
