Perhaps the greatest book of the Age of Enlightenment was published because of coffeehouse conversation.
Robert Hooke, the noted physicist, was drinking
coffee with
Halley,
Wren, and
Newton. Hooke brought up the inverse square law: the mathematical rule that was thought to govern the motion of planets. Newton, inspired by this discussion, decided to publish his book
Principia, the foundation of all modern physics. Another key book of the Enlightenment,
Adam Smith’s
The Wealth of Nations—the Bible of modern capitalism—was also written largely in a coffeehouse.