Scholars in Action takes on the expansive subject of eighteenth-century European savants through forty chapters first presented as papers at a conference to celebrate the three-hundredth birthday of Albrecht von Haller. The editors André Holenstein, Hubert Steinke and Martin Stuber, in collaboration with Philippe Rogger – all at von Haller's birthplace of Bern – have divided the chapters into six thematic sections. These focus on savants' establishing a learned reputation, acquiring and evaluating knowledge, reacting to their times, communicating, producing knowledge and serving as experts.

The introduction provides an overview of current thought on the changes which took place in the early modern conduct and perception of intellectual pursuits. As the editors briefly indicate, this has sometimes been presented in too uncomplicated a way by virtue of being treated as pan-European. The introduction then points the way by applying the six main themes of the volume to the ‘tensions between the constructed public figure and the actual concrete circumstances of [von Haller's] life’ (p. 26).

The chapters in Part One address the career of the savant, and range from more localized cases to discussion of the Republic of Letters. The more specific include Thomas Biskup on German natural historians' communicating with, and operating in, London; Iris Fleßenkämper on the changing nature of patronage and the establishment of professional autonomy in Scotland; Caspar Hirschi on French and English dictionary and encyclopedia writers and their growing favour; Marion Mücke on the mid-century membership of the Leopoldina academy; and Ulrich Johannes Schneider on Christian Gottlieb Jöcher and his General Dictionary of Scholars of 1750/1751. The chapters which address broader topics include René Sigrist's detailed analysis of the changing social characteristics of European botanists, and the respective chapters of Laurence Brockliss and Marian Füssel. Brockliss and Füssel explain how individuals could join and advance in the sprawling virtual Republic of Letters, and the latter discusses the moral economy of knowledge as well.

Part Two questions how savants acquired and evaluated knowledge, through specific cases and with a greater emphasis on Albrecht von Haller. Florence Catherine discusses responses in France to von Haller's writings, Claudia Engler mines his brief time as a librarian for revelatory details, and Anne Saada shows through financial accounts how the naturalist contributed extensively to a learned Göttingen journal. The other chapters in this section include Martin Gierl on an institutional conflict within the University of Göttingen over the separation of cultural and natural sciences, Thomas Habel casting Wilhelm Ernst Tentzel as a pioneer for learned journals in Germany, and Torsten Sander showing how the concept of ‘rarity’ entered the classification of knowledge and specifically Samuel Engels's Bibliotheca selectissima of 1743.

Part Three is about savants' responding to their times. Two authors concentrate mainly on von Haller: Rainer Godel uses some of the controversies in which he became embroiled to explore how disagreement fed into knowledge production, while Hole Rößler analyses savants' and especially von Haller's self-representation, self-observation and self-experimentation. Kirill Abrosimov discusses Voltaire's communication strategies as a publicly engaged intellectual during the Calas affair. Andreas Önnerfors probes how educated culture and the concept of ‘science’ was incorporated into European Freemasonry. Simone Zurbuchen describes reactions by Swiss ‘men of letters' to Rousseau. Finally, Daniel Fulda adopts a different approach by discussing and comparing models of scientific organization in von Haller's era and today – arguing that the ‘political-gallant’ ideal is making a return.

Part Four deals with savants' presentation and communication of knowledge, continuing the emphasis on socio-economic networks found throughout the sections. Clorinda Donato uses Italian communications with and about, and dedications to, von Haller, to examine the roles played by networks in knowledge transfer between the peninsula and Switzerland. Similarly, Miriam Nicoli traces exchanges between von Haller and Samuel-Auguste Tissot, and between those men and their publishers and booksellers, to explore savants' attitudes and strategies during a blossoming of the scientific book. Simona Boscani Leoni instead concentrates on the correspondence of Johann Jakob Scheuchzer, while Urs B. Leu employs Scheuchzer's investigation of the ‘Baden dice’ as a case study of the emergence and refinement of empiricism. Finally, Karl S. Guthke throws open the doors to the rest of the world by exploring how savants studied ‘exotic’ peoples and specimens with the aim of achieving comparative understanding.

Part Five centres on the production of knowledge, from diverse sociocultural and philosophical angles. Gunhild Berg suggests that the new experimental practices of early modern science infused everything at the University of Göttingen, from research and debate to institutional structures and architecture. Simone De Angelis focuses on von Haller's methods of physiological demonstration and argumentation in the Hamberger–Haller controversy, while Annette Meyer contrasts von Haller's and the Scottish Enlightenment's perceptions of changes taking place in natural history. László Kontler delves into the context of, and responses to, Hungarian Maximilian Hell's arctic expedition of 1768–1769. Finally, more pan-European chapters come from Lorraine Daston on the rise, nature and results of scientific observation during the Enlightenment, and from Bettina Dietz on the ways in which natural historians worked with travel reports and topographies.

Part Six deals with the early modern savant as expert. The chapters range from the very broad, e.g. Justin Stagl on the dynamics and definitions of social and political counsel in the early modern period, to the very local, such as Hartmut Schleiff on Saxony's mining elite. Barbara Braun-Bucher brings the volume back to von Haller by exploring the royal and republican dimensions of the naturalist's activities and milieu. The remaining chapters concentrate on the rising emphasis on utility in early modern science. Holger Böning explains how early Enlightenment scholars such as von Haller and Christian Wolff made the natural sciences more practical and social in focus. Reinhart Siegert trawls German title pages and prefaces in studying the concept of public benefit. Finally, Martin Stuber and Regula Wyss analyse the same trend in the Economic Society of Bern – especially its obsession with pest control.

This impressive work's having been inspired by a conference celebrating the life of Albrecht von Haller results in some drawbacks, but many benefits. A potential drawback is that the forty chapters, so diverse in subject, scope and style, may not fully hang together as one book. The editors have made an admirable effort at bringing them to order through the introduction and six themed sections, but there is much overlap between, and occasionally vagueness in, the divisions. However, von Haller's life proves a fruitful inspiration for an exploration of European savants. As the editors point out, the predominance of German-speaking scholars in these English-language volumes encourages modern ‘scholarly exchange across language barriers' (p. 3). The lives of von Haller and his associates – encompassing as they do diverse interests, European networks, and political as well as intellectual pursuits – have furthermore fostered within the chapters a strong emphasis on socio-economic networks and overarching cultural and social contexts, as well as Enlightenment scholarship. The editors' call for such a ‘consistent and transversal integration of scholarly practices and lifeworlds in the processes and structures of the eighteenth century’ (p. 39) is, while not now revolutionary, a worthy aim.