ABSTRACT
Philosophy and science have always flourished in their own context, changing from age to age, and in particular institutional forms. Scientific knowledge was no longer limited to the religious and medical professions, but was widely diffused through a diversifying and exuberant society. Science had become respectable, and apparently interesting, even in the upper levels of Parisian society. Everywhere in Europe the formation of scientific societies illustrates a dual tendency, on the one hand towards the crystallization of a specifically scientific organization out of informal groups having broader and more intellectual interests, and on the other towards the preponderance of the experimentalists within the organization. Science as a factor in creating national prestige, its role in war and in the commercial rivalry of states, were appreciated in England and France as well as in Germany; but no one who could claim high rank as a philosopher and scientist announced the importance of scientific organization to jealous statesmen more clearly than Leibniz.
