The stories are interlaced with philosophic conversations redolent of the French Encyclopedists. French encyclopedists alongside Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine. Alsted has been called 'one of the most important encyclopedists of all time'. The French tradition included Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Marquis de Condorcet, the Encyclopedists and the Physiocrats. His "Nine Books of Disciplines" became a model for later encyclopedists, especially Pliny the Elder. Renaissance encyclopedists were keenly aware of how much classical learning had been lost.