Emilie Du Chatelet by Judith P. Zinsser

Author:Judith P. Zinsser
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 1429588535
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2010-03-01T00:00:00+00:00

Recognition as a Philosophe: “Uranie”

In the end, these attacks from the man she loved and respected had little if any effect on the public argument. Du Châtelet emerged from the battle of the “compass” and the “fan” a clear, if not explicitly acknowledged, victor. To the Republic of Letters, a respected member of the gens des lettres and keeper of one of the king’s most prestigious institutions had been challenged not once but twice by a woman of the haute noblesse. These challenges had been not the frivolous repartee of a flirtatious courtier but, as described by the reviewer of the Institutions for the Mémoires de Trévoux, a serious presentation of a position on a relatively arcane point of physics, and one endorsed by many important philosophes on the Continent. Despite the reviewer’s obvious disagreement with the Leibnizian / Wolffian system and the formula for forces vives, the reviewer acknowledged Du Châtelet’s skills as a defender in the interchange with Mairan and continually praised “the anonymous author” as “a person of esprit [intelligence], knowledgeable about modern opinions, which are rendered in a style with much finesse & lively imagination.” It was in this “colloquial, instructional tone, graceful, intelligible & moreover noble & full of decorum,” that the author, “always ingenious,” presented “the system little known” in France. The Institutions was “in a word…a good compendium of modern physics.” Neither here nor in the review in the Journal des savants was her sex or her état mentioned. She was a peer with work to be critiqued, not patronized for its exceptionality. The second part of a review from the March issue of the Journal des savants praised the Institutions and made favorable comments about the formula for force, mv2. As the reviewer concluded, the author had explained ideas and given mathematical demonstrations on a “path…so different that few readers had the courage to follow.” She, however, “had not been afraid; great passions,” the reviewer suggested, “surmount great obstacles.”13

Mairan remained silent. He had changed his view of “literary battles” and now asserted that he had “neither the desire nor the necessary talents to play with the Public.” Du Châtelet guessed that “the honor of the Académie had become part of his defeat, and one judged it not appropriate to allow him to continue the dispute.” She commented to Maupertuis that the lack of learned support suggested that “it was more comfortable to impose silence than to speak to his [Mairan’s] liking.” Maupertuis, newly returned to Paris and thus able to survey the battlefield in person, took particular pleasure in the predicament of the old Academician, who was a former adversary of his as well. Maupertuis wrote to Algarotti: “M. De Mairan…wrote a work against her, to which she responded by another in which she was right in the content and the form, and where she treated Mairan with all types of superiority.” Echoing Du Châtelet’s own characterization, he continued, “There is nothing so ridiculous as this adventure for a secretary of the Académie.

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