Letters as an instrument of shaping scientific knowledge in the Ancient Regime : learned and amateur correspondences in the 18th century in France

This article wishes to present two types of scientific correspondence that contributed, in different ways, to the process of the shaping of knowledge in the French Enlightenment. On the one hand, we have the letters between peers, which exchanged on the subject of new discoveries and potential explanations of the natural phenomena. On the other hand, we find the fictional letter which is written by a man of science and addressed to a female reader; this kind of letter presents a complicated scientific issue in a simpler and an appealing way. The two types of scientific correspondence reveal the uncertainties and the many unsolved questions concerning the natural phenomena in the 18th century in Franc