Book Publishing and Geometrical Skills in the Career of Sébastien Le Clerc

Abstract

Sébastien Le Clerc was born into a family of goldsmiths in Lorraine, and received classical artisanal training. Yet over the course of a highly successful career as an engraver, he also became a widely published scientific author. This paper argues that geometrical skills played a key role in the dual development of Le Clerc’s career, and in his striving for recognition as a man of letters, as well as an engraver. By a detailed study of the geometrical skills displayed in Le Clerc’s two geometrical publications, this paper revisits the thorny question of the relations between scholars and artisans in the early modern period. Rather than a dependence on his hands-on, bodily experience, it was Le Clerc’s skill in geometry that lent support to his aspiring scholarly career.