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Reading Il Caffè: scientific method and economic knowledge in the “School of Milan” 277

admiring references to Newton’s work as well as to the simple, direct,
communicative style of figures like Diderot, d’Alembert and d’Holbach;
an attitude and tone British scientific circles had already made em-
blematic of their intellectual production in the 17th century.

Let me say a few words about these people. The character which they
require of Men is first of all goodness, rather than science. Their tone is
familiar, philanthropic. There is nothing of the magniloquent; there is no
pedantry; they discuss among themselves with fervor and rigor, with all the
5
good faith in the world .
The Accademia dei Pugni and its periodical Il Caffè (‘The Coffee
House’) both belonged to a very intense period that saw the birth of
several masterpices of the Italian Enlightenment: Pietro Verri’s
Meditazioni sulla felicità (‘Meditations on Happiness’, ca. 1763) and,
above all, Beccaria’s Dei delitti e delle pene (1764, ‘An Essay on Crimes
and Punishments’) made the “School of Milan” one of the true centers
6
for cosmopolitan dialogue . The international relevance and originality
of the economic knowledge developed in eighteenth-century Lombardy
is undisputable, and was clearly perceived by contemporaries. One of
the few obituaries published in the death of Adam Smith in July 1790,
which appeared in the Times and then reprinted on the Gentleman’s
Magazine stated that Smith had drawn attention to «subjects that un-
fortunately have become too popular in most countries of Europe. Dr
Smith’s system of political oeconomy is not essentially different from
7
that of Count Verri, Dean Tucker, and Mr Hume» .

5 G. Gaspari, Viaggio a Parigi e Londra, cit., p. 24, Paris, October 19, 1766. From the
mid 17th century the Royal Society required of its members, as an internal memorandum
of the period declares, «a discrete mode of speaking, simple, natural, clear in meaning,
preference for the language of craftsmen and merchants rather than that of philosophers»:
see P. Rossi, Il tempo dei maghi. Rinascimento e modernità, Milan, Cortina, p. 7.
6 Italy, in M. Delon (ed.), Encyclopedia of the Enlightenment, London-New York, Rout-
ledge, 2001, p. 724.
7 Quoted in E. Rothschild, Economic Sentiments: Adam Smith, Condorcet and the En-
2
lightenment, Cambridge Mass, Harvard University Press, 2002 . On Verri’s economic
thought see initially P.D. Groenewegen (ed.), Pietro Verri 1771: Reflections on Political
Economy, Sydney, University of Sydney, Reprints of Economic Classics (now reprinted
New York, Augustus M. Kelley, 1993); P.D. Groenewegen, Pietro Verri’s Mature Political
Economy of the Meditazioni, in M. Albertone, A. Masoero (eds), Political Economy and
National Realities, Turin, Fondazione Einaudi, 1994, pp. 107-125; P.D. Groenewegen,
The Significance of Verri’s Meditazioni in the History of Economic Thought: The Wider Eu-
ropean Influence, in C. Capra (ed.), Pietro Verri e il suo tempo, Milano, Cisalpino, vol. 2,
pp. 693-708; C. Capra, I progressi della ragione. Vita di Pietro Verri, Bologna, Il Mulino,
2002; P. Barucci, Gli Scritti di economia nella edizione nazionale delle Opere di Pietro
Verri, «Nuova Antologia», 2008, n. 2247, pp. 157-69.

n.43 Mediterranea - ricerche storiche - Anno XV - Agosto 2018
ISSN 1824-3010 (stampa) ISSN 1828-230X (online)