Description
Emilie du Châtelet was one of the most influential woman philosophers of the Enlightenment. Her writings on natural philosophy, physics, and mechanics had a decisive impact on important scientific debates of the 18th century. Particularly, she took an innovative and outstanding position in the controversy between Newton and Leibniz, one of the fundamental scientific discourses of that time.
The contributions in this volume focus on this "Leibnitian turn". They analyze the nature and motivation of Emilie du Châtelet's synthesis of Newtonian and Leibnitian philosophy. Apart from the Institutions Physiques they deal with Emilie du Châtelet's annotated translation of Isaac Newton's Principia.
The chapters presented here collectively demonstrate that her work was an essential contribution to the mediation between empiricist and rationalist positions in the history of science.
Table of Contents
Emilie Du Châtelet between Leibniz and Newton: The Transformation of Metaphysics, R. Hagengruber.- Maupertuis’ Lettre sur la comète, H. Hecht.- Between Newton and Leibniz: Emilie du Châtelet and Samuel Clarke, S. Hutton.- “Sancti Bernoulli orate pro nobis”. Emilie du Châtelet’s rediscovered Essai sur l’optique and her relation to the mathematicians from Basel, F. Nagel.- Leonhard Euler and Emilie Du Châtelet. On the post-Newtonian development of mechanics, D. Suisky.- Leibniz’s quantity of force: a ‘heresy’? Emilie Du Châtelets Institutions in the context of the vis viva controversy, A. Reichenberger.- From translation to philosophical discourse – Emilie du Châtelet's commentaries on Newton and Leibniz, U. Winter.- Selected Bibliography Emilie Du Châtelet.
