Andersen, Holly (2025) Blazing: Du Châtelet as central to the first paradigm in Newtonian mechanics. [Preprint]

Text Blazing chapter R3 preprint.pdf Download (334kB)

Abstract

I argue for two main points in historiography of physics regarding the significance of Du
Châtelet's Foundations of Physics in the development of mechanics. The first is that, despite Du
Châtelet calling it a textbook in the Preface, it should not be understood as 'merely' a textbook.
Instead, it fits in a tradition of women involved in natural philosophy in that era using liminal
publication opportunities, and to reduce some of the resistance to their publication. Even these
liminal opportunities were rare and mostly available to women of very high social standing and
wealth, who also happened to have supportive families or spouses, and were usually associated with
some other well-known male thinker. The second point is that, even if we treat Foundations as a
textbook, the way in which it synthesizes and refines work by Newton, Leibniz, Descartes, and
others, meets the criteria given by Kuhn for the establishment of a first paradigm, which is not
complete without such a definitive statement that enables the mop-up work characteristic of normal
science. I conclude that by Kuhn's own criteria, he ought to have identified Du Châtelet as

---

Export/Citation:

EndNote | BibTeX | Dublin Core | ASCII/Text Citation (Chicago) | HTML Citation | OpenURL

Social Networking:

Share |

---

Item Type:	Preprint
Creators:	Creators Email ORCID Andersen, Holly holly_andersen@sfu.ca 0000-0002-7950-8186
Additional Information:	Forthcoming in The Bloomsbury Handbook of Du Châtelet. Bloomsbury, ed. F. Amijee.
Keywords:	historiography of science, history of physics, Du Châtelet, paradigms, Kuhn, early modern mechanics
Subjects:	Specific Sciences > Physics > Classical Physics General Issues > Feminist Approaches General Issues > History of Philosophy of Science General Issues > History of Science Case Studies Specific Sciences > Physics General Issues > Theory Change
Depositing User:	Dr. Holly Andersen
Date Deposited:	03 Jun 2025 13:09
Last Modified:	03 Jun 2025 13:09
Item ID:	25538
Subjects:	Specific Sciences > Physics > Classical Physics General Issues > Feminist Approaches General Issues > History of Philosophy of Science General Issues > History of Science Case Studies Specific Sciences > Physics General Issues > Theory Change
Date:	2025
URI:	https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/25538

Monthly Views for the past 3 years

Monthly Downloads for the past 3 years

Plum Analytics

Actions (login required)

View Item