 However, Pufendorf adapted this approach in subsequent works. Though he purported still to favor a ‘mathematical’ over an (“lubrica, infinita, et vere invia”) empirical approach when writing to (Johan Christian von) Boineburg (1622–1672) in January 1663 (BW #16, 1996, p. 24), criticism by Hermann Conring (1601–1681) and Johann Heinrich Boecler (1611–1672; see Palladini 1997a), which urged him to include a consideration of other writers, particularly the ancients, soon led to a change in style. Thus, beginning with his dissertations at Heidelberg, and then in the major natural law writings at Lund that emerged therefrom, Pufendorf eliminated the formal scaffolding of the mos geometricus and interacted more explicitly and directly with other, historical authors. The new approach enlisted his considerable erudition (DAS cites over two hundred sources) – in a transitional culture where a reputation for being learned remained important – while avoiding mere commentary or appeal to intellectual authority, procedures which he explicitly dismissed. Instead, Pufendorf now employed an ‘eclectic’ method that still involved rational analysis and argument, to be sure, but that also acknowledged the contingency of both his worldly subject matter and its intellectual construal (Hochstrasser 2000). The goal remained comprehensive understanding and demonstrative certitude, but one informed by wide and reflectively appropriated experience (derived from a careful study of history and contemporary events), and thus yielding a more empirically grounded and realistic (think Thucydides, Tacitus, Machiavelli, Lipsius, Hobbes) sort of moral and political argument.