Work · Empiricism, Enlightenment & Liberalism
Foundations of Physics (Institutions de physique)
Leibnizian metaphysics – sufficient reason, living force – as the foundation of Newtonian physics, written for her son.
Introduction
Émilie du Châtelet first published the book anonymously in 1740, presenting it as an introduction to physics for her thirteen-year-old son. The opening chapters lay out a metaphysics drawn from Leibniz and Christian Wolff – the principles of contradiction and sufficient reason, space and time as orders of relations – and the later chapters treat mechanics, gravitation and motion. She defends the Leibnizian measure of “living force” (mv², roughly what is now called kinetic energy) against the Newtonians, and her reply to Dortous de Mairan on this question was printed with the 1742 edition. The book was soon translated into German and Italian.
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Connections
Builds on
- Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy (Principia)1687 · Isaac Newton
- Monadology1714 · Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
More works by Émilie du Châtelet
- c. 1746Discourse on Happiness
Sources: Wikidata
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