SOURCE: Hayes, Julie Candler. “Physics and Figuration in Du Châtelet's ‘Institutions de physique.’” In Reading the French Enlightenment: System and Subversion, pp. 86-110. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.

In this essay, Hayes highlights how du Châtelet inserts herself into her text, establishing her voice by drawing together two models of thought—in this case Newtonian physics and Leibnizian metaphysics—and building her own position through the connections and analogies.

For philosophers and scientists as well as the non-specialist reading public, Newtonian science presented a model of conceptual clarity and methodological purity. Even if Newton's prestige was not enough to save the word “système” from its negative connotations, for d'Alembert, Newton “gave Philosophy the form it should preserve.” To the notion that Newton had brought philosophy to definitive perfection one can frame several sorts of replies, and for a number of commentators, aspects of his method and...