ABSTRACT
In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the scientific landscape in Europe underwent a major transformation. Universities were in decline, while scientific societies were expanding. Some universities had to close their doors, while others implemented or tried to implement major reforms, in particular by promoting useful knowledge. A growing number of devotees operated outside these institutions, but it is often forgotten that in order to gain recognition, they were still dependent on the goodwill of university professors and members of the academies to act as intermediaries. A striking example of this interdependence is the way in which Eise Eisinga’s extraordinary planetarium became famous through a booklet written by the Franeker professor of philosophy and physics Jean Henri van Swinden (1780).
