March, Eleanor
(2025)
"the logical sequence of his Principles": Understanding Du Châtelet on Newton's law of gravitation in the Principia.
[Preprint]
This is the latest version of this item.
Abstract
Émilie Du Châtelet (1706-1749) is perhaps equally well-known for her magnum opus, the Institutions de Physique (Foundations of Physics) of 1740, of 1740 (with the second edition in 1742), and for her later French translation of Newton’s Principia (first published posthumously in 1756, with the corrected edition in 1759), as part of which she included a text titled Exposition abgregée du systême du monde, et explication des principaux phénomenes astronomiques tirée des principes de M. Newton (Abridged exposition of the system of the world, and explanation of the principal astronomical phenomena according to the principles of Mr. Newton). One of the few topics which Du Châtelet addresses in detail in both the Foundations and the Exposition of her translation is Newton’s arguments for his law of gravitation in the Principia. To date, however, no systematic comparison of the two has been undertaken (and very little has been said on either of them separately). I reconstruct and compare these two accounts. In doing so, I draw out several important threads in Du Châtelet’s thinking on the justification of Newton’s law of gravitation within the Newtonian system - in particular, the complexities Du Châtelet recognized vis-à-vis the inductive generalization of gravitational attraction, the extent to which she saw inductive conclusions about universal gravitation as needing to be limited as a result, and her understanding of the status of Newton’s third law of motion and pairwise reciprocity of gravitational attraction in the argument for his law of gravitation. I also discuss the extent to which Du Châtelet’s accounts of Newton’s arguments for his law of gravitation in the Foundations and Exposition are best understood as rational reconstructions of the Newtonian system. This offers a new perspective on Du Châtelet's developing thinking on the justification of Newton's law of gravitation within the Newtonian system.
Available Versions of this Item
Monthly Views for the past 3 years
Monthly Downloads for the past 3 years
Plum Analytics
Actions (login required)
 |
View Item |
![[img]](https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/style/images/fileicons/text.png)
![[feed]](http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/style/images/feed-icon-32x32.png){kind=icon}