Month: February 2011

Café Procope was the hub of the 18th Century Enlightenment.

It was the unexampled mix of habitués that surprised visitors, though no one remarked on the absence of women. Louis, chevalier de Mailly, in Les Entretiens des caffés, 1702, remarked:

The cafés are most agreeable places, and ones where one finds all sorts of people of different characters. There one sees fine young gentlemen, agreeably enjoying themselves; there one sees the savants who come to leave aside the laborious spirit of the study; there one sees others whose gravity and plumpness stand in for merit. Those, in a raised voice, often impose silence on the deftest wit, and rouse themselves to praise everything that is to be blamed, and blame everything that is worthy of praise. How entertaining for those of spirit to see originals setting themselves up as arbiters of good taste and deciding with an imperious tone what is over their depth!

Throughout the 18th century, the brasserie Procope was the meeting place of the intellectual establishment, and of the nouvellistes of the scandal-gossip trade, whose remarks at Procope were repeated in the police reports. Not all the Encyclopédistes drank forty cups of coffee a day like Voltaire, who mixed his with chocolate, but they all met at Procope, as did Benjamin Franklin, John Paul Jones and Thomas Jefferson. [Wikipedia]

Some of the coffee houses of the 18th Century became ‘penny universities‘ – loci of learning and discourse. The penny university was open to all, regardless of class, if they could afford a penny (or in modern parlance: a Low-Fat Skinny Soy De-Caf Latte).

The echoes of Café Procope and the penny universities are left with me as I begin the process to become a Fellow of the RSA. The RSA has its own meeting place in London and a network of Fellows which spans the world. But outside of London we are left with letters, emails and social networks to fall back upon. My own contacts with the RSA have been emails, texts and a solitary meeting. With these roughly-hewn tools we attempt to change the world.

While Benjamin Franklin, Voltaire, and John Paul Jones were famous freemasons, I see the formation of a closed fraternity to be classist, sexist and ultimately responsible for the situation we find ourselves in now. I’d give an organ for a Cafe establishment modelled on Procope which offered a membership more than a loyalty card. That was open to people based on their temperament rather than their class or sex.

So I propose a hub of 21st Century Enlightenment. Where we cast aside the old superstitions of the past, where we pursue invention and business not just for the sake of invention and business, but for the betterment of the present and the construction of the future.