Acknowledgments

This book is the fruit of a number of happy encounters that have gradually shaped my mind and life in ways that I could hardly imagine ten years ago. It all began in 2001, when I joined the Research Center for the Foundations of Modern Thought at the University of Bucharest, a small community of historians of early modern philosophy and science eager to share their knowledge and friendship. Vlad Alexandrescu was a wonderful tutor and has offered a perfectly balanced combination of kind encouragement and sharp criticism throughout these years. His elegant erudition is a permanent lesson in style, of which I am still a stumbling student. Dana Jalobeanu has been the very pattern of a mind never at rest, always in search of the significant question, always unsatisfied with beaten tracks, always prepared to start off new projects. I couldn’t keep up with her zest at all times (no one can!), but our work together has been a constant source of reflection for me, and a good part of this book grew out of our ongoing conversations.

The very project of this book and its trajectory owe a great deal to Peter Anstey, whose research suggestions and inspired guidance came at several key moments in my work. I am especially grateful to him for having been able to bolster my courage and confidence at times when my own resources faltered. A big thank you also to Mihaela Irimia, who has offered her unconditional support ever since my undergraduate years, and whose promotion of the field of intellectual and cultural history at the University of Bucharest has created a natural institutional home for my work. I am also deeply indebted to Dan Garber, whose largeness of heart, pedagogical wisdom, and outstanding scholarship have been a model for the whole Foundations of Modern Thought Research Group, with which he has collaborated for the last ten years. These scholars’ feedback on my work and their support in its promotion are part of the reason there is a book at all that I can talk about now.

Research for this project was supported by several institutions. I was the recipient of two research scholarships that were critical in the elaboration of the work on which this book is based: an OSI/FCO Chevening Scholarship at Oxford in 2005–6, and an NEC Scholarship at New Europe College, Bucharest, in 2006–7. At that stage, my research benefited from the tutorial assistance of Paul Lodge and Anita Avramides at Oxford, and of Anca Oroveanu and Andrei Plesu at New Europe College. I also received several postdoctoral research travel grants sponsored by the Romanian Research Council and the European Research Council as part of research projects of which I am a member, which allowed me to continue work on this book in Oxford and London in the period 2008–10. I thank all these institutions for the opportunities they offered.

I am also grateful to a number of scholars whose trust, comments, and suggestions contributed to the progress of my work throughout these years. Peter Harrison and Richard Yeo read and reacted in a helpful way to a paper that formed the backbone of the project that led to this book. Jeff Schwegman read chapters of it and offered illuminating comments. At several stages of my work I received faith-building and thought-provoking responses from Roger Ariew, Constance Blackwell, Andreas Blank, Raphaële Garrod, Stephen Gaukroger, Guido Giglioni, Norma Goethe, Peter Harrison, Howard Hotson, Michael McKeon, Adina Ruiu, Eric Schliesser, Justin Smith, and Koen Vermeir. I thank them all. The Foundations of Modern Thought Research Group’s regular seminars were especially important to this project, particularly those on Francis Bacon and on the early modern treatises of the passions, and the work-in-progress seminar, organized over the period 2007–10. I thank the group’s members (Sorin Costreie, Mihnea Dobre, Laura Georgescu, Mădălina Giurgea, Lucian Petrescu, Doina Rusu, and Grigore Vida) for their discussions and feedback. I also wish to thank the participants in the yearly Bucharest-Princeton Seminar in Early Modern Philosophy, those in the NEC Fellows’ Seminar 2006–7, as well as those in the conferences where I presented parts of my work, for their questions and comments. Thank you also to my colleagues at the English Department, University of Bucharest, especially Dragoş Ivana, Ioana Luca, Petruţa Năiduţ, Mădălina Nicolaescu, and Bogdan Ştefănescu, for their advice and support.

Some of the material in this book was previously published as part of the following volume chapters: “To ‘Clear the Mind of All Perturbation’: The Discipline of Judgment in the Seventeenth Century,” in New Europe College Yearbook 2006–2007, edited by Irina Vainovski-Mihai, 57–94 (Bucharest: New Europe College, 2009); “Locke on the Study of Nature,” in Branching Off: The Early Moderns in Quest for the Unity of Knowledge, edited by Vlad Alexandrescu, 187–207 (Bucharest: Zeta Books, 2009); “Robert Boyle on ‘Right Reason’ and ‘Physical and Theological Experience,’” in Nature et Surnaturel: Philosophies de la nature et métaphysique aux XVIe–XVIIIe siècles, edited by Vlad Alexandrescu and Robert Thais, 125–36 (Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlag, 2010). I thank the editors for permission to use and rework that material for this book.

I also wish to thank the editors of the University of Chicago Press for their expert assistance. Karen Darling received and supported this project with unfaltering enthusiasm, offered timely advice at the several stages of the editorial process, and had the inspiration to find two readers whose insightful comments on the manuscript contributed significantly to its final shape. I am especially indebted to one of the anonymous readers, who provided a thoroughgoing radiography of the text and a number of essential questions and suggestions. Thank you also to Susan Tarcov, whose careful editing did a lot of good to my English prose and to the shape of the manuscript as a whole.

My greatest gratitude is ever to my family. My mother Doina, my father George, and my brother Costin are my source of strength in any endeavor. Besides them, I owe whatever I’m worth to Horia, my better half and the best of friends. My life and my work would be less than they are were it not for the joy, direction, and perspective that he imparts to them. This book is dedicated to him.