The diaries suggest a new source of knowledge – through knowledge and terrain – that undermined these sources of authority. The history of the Academies in France during the Enlightenment begins with the Academy of Sciences, founded in 1666 in Paris. The Academies demonstrate the growing interest in science together with its growing secularization, as demonstrated by the small number of clerics who were members (13%). The book outlines the structure of the "bourgeois public sphere" in eighteenth-century Europe. The first was their role in shifting the attention of the "educated public" from "established authorities" to "what was new, innovative, or challenging." Second, they did much to promote “enlightened ideals of tolerance and intellectual objectivity.” Third, the newspapers were an implicit criticism of existing notions of absolute accuracy monopolized by monarchies, parliaments and pious authorities. This affection lengthens the face, destroys the complexion, shortens the prominence, and causes horrible devastation where it resides. Owen Aldridge demonstrated how Enl...