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Du Châtelet and Descartes on the Roles of Hypothesis and Metaphysics in Natural Philosophy

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Abstract

In this chapter, I examine similarities and divergences between Du Châtelet and Descartes on their endorsement of the use of hypotheses in science, using the work of Condillac to locate them in his scheme of systematizers. I conclude that, while Du Châtelet is still clearly a natural philosopher, as opposed to modern scientist, her conception of hypotheses is considerably more modern than is Descartes’, a difference that finds its roots in their divergence on the nature of first principles.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Witness the title of a recent book collecting scholarly thoughts, Du Châtelet texts, photographs of artifacts relevant to Du Châtelet’s context and so forth: Madame Du Châtelet: La femme des Lumières, under the direction of Elisabeth Badinter and Danielle Muzerelle (Paris: Bibliothèque nationale de France, 2006).

  2. 2.

    For an articulation (though not an endorsement) of this approach, see Aram Vartanian, Diderot and Descartes: A Study of Scientific Naturalism in the Enlightenment (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1958), 136.

  3. 3.

    I do not mean to indicate that Newton himself was not a natural philosopher. Indeed, the conceptual relationship between Du Châtelet and Newton along multiple fronts, including an analysis of both on the role of hypothesis in science, and the relation between metaphysics and physics in their work, requires a separate and sustained study. On Newton as natural philosopher see, for example, Andrew Janiak, Newton as philosopher (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008).

  4. 4.

    See Erica Harth, Cartesian Women: Versions and Subversions of Rational Discourse in the Old Regime (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992), 190. For an account of Du Châtelet’s developing views on the fall of Cartesianism and especially the rise of Newtonianism, see Sarah Hutton, ‘Women, Science, and Newtonianism: Émilie Du Châtelet versus Francesco Algarotti’ in Newton and Newtonianism, edited by J.E. Force and S. Hutton (Dordrecht: Kluwer Publishing, 2004), 183–203 (Hereafter, Hutton 2004b). For an argument in favor of the persistent prevalence of Newtonian over Leibnizian thought in Du Châtelet, even from 1738 (when she became acquainted with Leibnizianism), see Sarah Hutton, ‘Émilie Du Châtelet’s Institutions de physique as a document in the history of French Newtonianism,’ Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science 35 (2004), 515–531 (Hereafter Hutton 2004a). For a continuation of these themes and the conceptual relation between Du Châtelet and Samuel Clarke, see Sarah Hutton, ‘Between Newton and Leibniz: Émilie Du Châtelet and Samuel Clarke’ in Émilie Du Châtelet: Between Leibniz and Newton, edited by Ruth Hagengruber (London: Springer, 2012).

  5. 5.

    For a general endorsement, albeit with some caveats, of Du Châtelet’s rejection of Cartesianism, see Linda Gardiner Janik, ‘Searching for the metaphysics of science: the structure and composition of madame Du Châtelet’s Institutions de physique, 1737–1740,’ Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century 201 (1982), 87. See also Margaret Alic, Hypatia’s Heritage: A History of Women in Science from Antiquity to the Late Nineteenth Century (London: The Women’s Press Ltd., 1986), 139; William H. Barber, ‘Mme du Châtelet and Leibnizianism: the genesis of the Institutions de physique’ in The Age of Enlightenment: Studies Presented to Theodore Besterman, edited by W.H. Barber, J.H. Brumfitt, R.A. Leigh, R. Shackelton, and S.S.B. Taylor (Edinburgh: University Court of the University of St. Andrews, 1967), 208, and Sarah Hutton, ‘Émilie Du Châtelet’s Institutions de physique’, 517.

  6. 6.

    Others have noted Du Châtelet’s positive intellectual evaluation of Descartes, including her explicit praise of him or (more significantly) her conceptual affinities with him. For example, there is an affinity between the argumentative structure of Descartes’ Principles and Du Châtelet’s Institutions one aspect of which is their shared method, which I address in the final section of this paper. On this point, see Judith P. Zinsser, La Dame d’Esprit: A Biography of The Marquise Du Châtelet (New York: Viking, 2006), 173; Marcy P. Lascano, ‘Émilie du Châtelet on the Existence and Nature of God: An Examination of Her Arguments in Light of Their Sources,’ in the British Journal for the History of Philosophy 19.4 (2011): 742–3. Zinsser also notes their shared commitment to ‘reasoning from first principles’, though I will examine their differences on this below. See Judith P. Zinsser, ‘The Many Representations of the Marquise Du Châtelet’ in Men, Women, and the Birthing of Modern Science, edited by Judith P. Zinsser (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2005), 54. See also Janik, ‘Searching for the metaphysics of science’, 91 for a general statement of their limited affinity.

  7. 7.

    Vartanian notes the enduring influence of Descartes’ method in eighteenth-century thought despite the rise in popularity of Newtonianism during the same decades. See Vartanian, Diderot and Descartes, 136.

  8. 8.

    In the twentieth century, Ira O. Wade first made explicit the idea that Du Châtelet’s thought was original and quite independent of that of Voltaire. See I.O. Wade, Studies on Voltaire with some unpublished papers of Madame du Châtelet (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1947). See also his Voltaire and Madame du Châtelet: An Essay on the Intellectual Activity at Cirey (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1941), where he suggests she took the lead over Voltaire on metaphysics, physics and biblical criticism (p. 195). William Barber argued against this view, concluding that she is ‘essentially derivative’ of a number of her male contemporaries, most notably Voltaire. See Barber, ‘Mme du Châtelet and Leibnizianism’, 200–22. Julian L. Coolidge, ‘Six Female Mathematicians’ Scripta Mathematica 17 (1951), 20–31 concludes (convincingly) that in the field of mathematics, she made no original contributions. Kathryn A. Neeley argues that women like Du Châtelet who made no original contributions were nonetheless important to the advance of science because of their role as mediators. See Kathryn A. Neeley, ‘Woman as Mediatrix: Women as Writers on Science and Technology in The Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries’ in IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication 35.4 (1992), 208–16. For an historical account of Du Châtelet’s reception from her own time to the mid-twentieth century, see Lydia D. Allen. ‘Physics, frivolity, and “Madame Pompon-Newton”: the historical reception of the Marquise du Châtelet from 1750–1966’ (University of Cincinnati: PhD dissertation, 1998). Since at least the mid-twentieth century, the vast preponderance of work has aimed to show Du Châtelet’s originality at least in natural philosophy.

  9. 9.

    The two modes of amassing (certain) knowledge as detailed in the Rules are intuition and deduction (both first mentioned in rule #3), leaving no room for hypotheses. On method in this early work compared with the rise of hypotheses in Descartes’ later work, see Ernan McMullin, ‘Explanation as Confirmation in Descartes’s Natural Philosophy’ in A Companion to Descartes, edited by Janet Broughton and John Carriero (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2008), 87–8.

  10. 10.

    On her familiarity with Optics and Discourse, see Du Châtelet’s own Institutions (Avant-Propos V), which includes comments that Judith P. Zinsser convincingly believes refer to those two texts as well as to his Geometry. See Zinsser, La Dame d’Esprit, 172–3. In a 1739 letter to Laurent François Prault, Du Châtelet mentioned having some unnamed books (‘les oeuvres’) of Descartes; see Les lettres de la Marquise du Châtelet, edited by Theodore Besterman (Geneva: Institut et Musee Voltaire, 1958), vol. I, letter #186, p. 329. On her familiarity with the Principles, we know that she made notes on the French version of that text, notes which are preserved in the Voltaire Collection in St. Petersburg, vol. 9, pp., 122–25: see Zinsser, ‘La Dame d’Esprit’, 148–9. For inventories of books in Du Châtelet’s libraries, see Andrew Brown and Ulla Kölving, ‘À la recherché des livres d’Émilie Du Châtalet’ in Émilie Du Châtalet: éclairages & documents nouveaux, edited by Ulla Kölving and Olivier Courcelle (Paris: Publication du Centre International d’Étude du XVIIIe Siècle 21. Ferney-Voltaire: Centre International d’Étude du XVIIIe Siècle), 111–120.

  11. 11.

    The account of Descartes’ use of hypothesis, which I offer is not new. Many have acknowledged Descartes’ use of hypothesis in the way, and for the reasons, I detail below. See, as just two of many examples, Larry Lauden, Science and Hypothesis: Historical Essays on Scientific Methodology (Dordrecht: D. Reidel Publishing Company, 1981), 29–33; and Desmond Clarke, Occult Powers and Hypotheses: Cartesian Natural Philosophy under Louis XIV (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), chapter 5, passim.

  12. 12.

    For the significance of this innovation in Descartes in the meaning and scope of metaphysics, see Gary Hatfield, ‘Metaphysics and the New Science’ in Reappraisals of the Scientific Revolution, edited by David C. Lindberg and Robert S. Westman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 111–7.

  13. 13.

    For more on these two approaches to hypothesis, including the understanding of those such as Kepler and Galileo who believed these methods to be compatible, see Ernan McMullin, ‘Hypothesis’ in Encyclopedia of the Scientific Revolution: From Copernicus to Newton, edited by Wilbur Applebaum (New York: Garland Publishing Inc., 2000), 316–7; and Michael Friedman, ‘Descartes and Galileo: Copernicanism and the Metaphysical Foundations of Physics’ in A Companion to Descartes, edited by Janet Broughton and John Carriero (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2008), 71.

  14. 14.

    There is a moment in the Principles when he seems to allow for the latter use of hypotheses, but a careful reading of this passage leaves open the distinct possibility that what is going on in the passage is Descartes’ recognition of their lack of certainty, not their mere instrumentality. See (PP III, §44; AT VIIIa, 99; CSM I, 255). The preponderance of Descartes’ claims indicates that he takes the role of the natural philosopher to be the pursuit of true causes of phenomena.

  15. 15.

    For accounts of Descartes’ maturation on the relation between hypotheses and scientific epistemology, see Clarke, Occult Powers, chapter 7; Desmond Clarke, ‘Hypotheses’ in The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy in Early Modern Europe, edited by Catherine Wilson and Desmond Clarke (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 249–71; Ernan McMullin, ‘Conceptions of Science in the Scientific Revolution’ in Reappraisals of the Scientific Revolution, edited by David C. Lindberg and Robert S. Westman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 32–44; McMullin, ‘Hypotheses,’; and McMullin ‘Explanation as Confirmation’. For a much earlier account of many of these themes recently developed by Clarke and McMullin, including a discussion of hypotheses, see Daniel Garber, ‘Science and Certainty in Descartes’ in Descartes: Critical and Interpretive Essays, edited by Michael Hooker (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978), 114–51.

  16. 16.

    Edme Mariotte, Essai de logique (1678) in Oeuvres, volume ii, 624. Cited in Clarke, Occult Powers, 194.

  17. 17.

    For discussions on why Descartes’ hypotheses are not merely speculative, see for example, McMullin, ‘Explanation as Confirmation’, 89, and Clarke, Occult Powers, 141–4. The latter makes a distinction between arbitrary and reasonable hypotheses, with reasonable hypotheses being assumptions, which can be systematized and unified into a system, ideally bound by laws.

  18. 18.

    I will use throughout, except where noted, Du Châtelet’s 1740 Institutions de physiques. I acknowledge a few important developments between this text and her 1742 edition, renamed Institutions physique, in the final section of this paper. For details on other changes, which have no impact on my arguments, see Hutton, ‘Émilie Du Châtelet’s Institutions de physique’, 529.

  19. 19.

    See Keiko Kawashima for her evaluation of Du Châtelet’s conceptual relationship with her close contemporaries on hypotheses. Kawashima, ‘Les idées scientifiques de Madame du Châtelet dans ses Institutions de physique: un rêve de femme de la haute société dans la culture scientifique au Siècle des Lumières. 1ère partie’ in Historia Scientiarum 3.1 (1993), 67–68, 67–68. For other discussions of Du Châtelet on hypothesis, see Ruth Hagengruber, ‘Émilie Du Châtelet between Leibniz and Newton: The Transformation of Metaphysics’ in Émilie Du Châtelet: Between Leibniz and Newton, edited by Ruth Hagengruber (London: Springer, 2012), 1–60; and Sarah Hutton, ‘Between Leibniz and Newton: Emilie du Châtelet and Samuel Clarke’ in Émilie Du Châtelet: Between Leibniz and Newton, edited by Ruth Hagengruber (London: Springer, 2012), 77–96.

  20. 20.

    Du Châtelet reverses her position on space and time in the Institutions, endorsing Leibniz’s position over that of Clarke and Newton, which latter she had presumably endorsed in 1738. See her letter of 10 February 1738 to Maupertuis in Lettres, vol 1, #120, p. 217, stating that Clarke was correct over Leibniz on all points of their correspondence with the exception of forces vives. See Hutton, ‘Between Leibniz and Newton: Emilie du Châtelet and Samuel Clarke’ in Émilie Du Châtelet: Between Leibniz and Newton, edited by Ruth Hagengruber (London: Springer, 2012), 77–96.

  21. 21.

    Zinsser discusses this feature of Du Châtelet’s thought in Zinsser, ‘The Many Representations.’ Notably, if Descartes’ causal principles ultimately rest upon the idea of universal efficient causation, and if universal efficient causation is an expression of the principle of sufficient reason, then Descartes’ causal principles also ultimately rely upon the principle of sufficient reason, even if this reliance is not explicit as it is in the case of Du Châtelet.

  22. 22.

    On this point, I dissent from Janik who believes that Du Châtelet uses the principle of sufficient reason as only a rational, not a causal, principle. Janik, ‘Searching for the Metaphysics of Science,’ p. 104. Janik, however, seems to implicitly acknowledge that the causal aspect of that principle is at work in Du Châtelet’s thought. See ibid, pp. 104–5.

  23. 23.

    Du Châtelet’s chapter on hypotheses captures many aspects of Robert Boyle’s account of good and excellent hypotheses. See Robert Boyle, ‘The Requisites of a Good Hypothesis are’ and ‘The Requisites of an Excellent Hypothesis are’ in ‘Unpublished Boyle Papers Relating to Scientific Method – II’, edited by Richard S. Westfall, Annals of Science 12.2 (1956), 103–17.

  24. 24.

    Du Châtelet’s work on hypothesis forms the foundations for the 1765 Encyclopédie, ou Dictionnaire Raissonné des Sciences, edited by Denis Diderot. Large portions of the entry on ‘hypothesis’ are lifted almost verbatim from chapter 4 of her Institutions. For a discussion of the role various concepts from her Institutions play in the Encyclopédie, see Koffi Maglo, ‘Mme Du Châtelet, l’ Encyclopédie, et la philosophie des sciences’ in Émilie Du Châtalet: éclairages & documents nouveaux, edited by Ulla Kölving and Olivier Courcelle (Ferney-Voltaire: Centre International d’Étude du XVIIIe Siècle, 2008), 255–66.

  25. 25.

    Peter Anstey, ‘Experimental versus Speculative Natural Philosophy’ in The Science of Nature in the Seventeenth Century, edited by Peter Anstey and John A. Schuster (Dordrecht: Spring, 2005), 223–24.

  26. 26.

    William Wotton, Reflections Upon Ancient and Modern Learning (London, 1694), 244.

  27. 27.

    Isaac Newton, ‘Draft of a letter to Roger Cotes, March 1713’ in The Correspondence of Isaac Newton, 7 volumes, edited by H.W. Turnbull, J.F. Scott, A.R. Hall, and L. Tilling (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1959–77), 398–90. This associating of hypotheses with overly imaginative speculation is articulated by many thinkers at the time including Robert Boyle, Margaret Cavendish, Oliver Goldsmith, Henry Pemberton, Henry Powers, John Sergeant, Willem Gravesande, and Thomas Sprat. See Anstey, ‘Experimental versus Speculative’, passim, and Lauden, Science and Hypothesis, 103, fn. 3.

  28. 28.

    Du Châtelet herself has a much more subtle – and arguably accurate – understanding of Newton’s methodology than do many of her contemporaries including, for example, Voltaire. More recent commentators who have looked more closely at Newton’s approach to hypotheses include I Bernard Cohen, ‘Hypotheses in Newton’s Philosophy’ Physis Rivista Internazionale di Storia della Scienza 8 (1966), 163–84; and N.R. Hanson, ‘Hypotheses Fingo’ in The Methodological Heritage of Newton, edited by Robert E. Butts and John W. Davis (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1970),14–33.

  29. 29.

    For Voltaire’s challenge of Descartes’ philosophy specifically because of his use of hypotheses, see Voltaire, Eléments de la philosophie de Newton, edited by Robert L. Walters and W.H. Barber in The Complete Works of Voltaire, volume 15, general editors W.H. Barber and Ulla Kölving (Oxford: University of Oxford Press, [1738] 1992), pp. 337, fn. 9; 401; and 699–700. For praise of Newton for avoiding the use of hypotheses, see ibid., p. 729. For a direct comparison of the two to Descartes’ disadvantage and Newton’s advantage, see ibid., pp. 733–4.

  30. 30.

    Jeff Loveland, Rhetoric and natural history: Buffon in polemical and literary context, in the series Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century, issue 3 (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2001): pp. 100ff. Loveland also includes Dortous de Mairan and Jean Le Rond d’Alembert among those championing hypotheses and systems.

  31. 31.

    For another very satisfying approach to Du Châtelet, hypotheses, systems and the role of experiment, with different of her contemporaries serving as the intellectual context, see Robert Locqueneux, ‘La physique expérimentale ver 1740: expériences, systèmes et hypotheses’ in Cirey dans la vie intellectualle: La réception de Newton en France, edited by François de Gandt Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century, issue 11 (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2001): 90–111.

  32. 32.

    Etienne Bonnot, Abbé de Condillac, A Treatise on Systems, translated by Franklin Philip with the collaboration of Harlan Lane (Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers, [1749] 1982).

  33. 33.

    For sustained treatments of Condillac’s thoughts on systems, see Ellen McNiven Hine, A Critical Study of Condillas’s Traité des systèmes (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1979); Robert McRae, The Problem of the Unity of the Sciences: Bacon to Kant, chapter V: ‘Condillac: the Abridgement of All Knowledge in “The Same is the Same”’ (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1961); Leonora Rosenfeld, ‘Condillac’s Influence on French Scientific Thought’ in The Triumph of Culture: eighteenth Century Persepctives, edited by Paul Fritz and David Williams (Toronto: A.M. Hakkert Ltd., 1972); and Jeffrey Schwegman, ‘The “System” as a Reading Technology: Pedagogy and Philosophical Criticism in Condillac’s Traité des systèmes’. Journal of the History of Ideas 71.3 (2010), 387–409.

  34. 34.

    Voltaire to Maupertuis, 1 October 1738 in Voltaire, Correspondence and related documents, ed. Theodore Besterman (Genève: Institut et Musee Voltaire, 1968–77), letter #1622. See Barber, ‘Mme Du Châtelet’, p. 220 for a detailed account of her rejection of Voltaire’s extreme reaction against metaphysics.

  35. 35.

    Janik notes this as one of Du Châtelet’s central physico-theological interests with her opinion solidifying in favor of intellectualism by 1740. See Janik, ‘Search for the metaphysics of physics’, pp. 101 and 104. See also Robert Locqueneux, ‘Les Institutions de physique de Madame Du Châtelet, ou un traite de paix entre Descartes, Leibniz et Newton’ Revue du Nord 77.312 (1995): 866. For her disagreement with Voltaire’s approach because of its disadvantage in science, see Hagengruber, ‘Émilie Du Châtelet between Leibniz and Newton: The Transformation of Metaphysics’ in Émilie Du Châtelet: Between Leibniz and Newton, edited by Ruth Hagengruber (London: Springer, 2012), 1–60.

  36. 36.

    Descartes himself refuses to privilege God’s will over his intellect, or indeed any ‘part’ of God over another since God is a perfect unity and does not, therefore, have parts. It is a mark of our epistemic limitation that we have to think of him as having parts with one (e.g. will) taking precedence over another (e.g. intellect). See AT I, 152–3; CSMK 25–6.

  37. 37.

    Pierre Gassendi, Disquisitio metaphysica seu dubitationes et instantiae adversus Renati Cartesii metaphysicam et responsa, edited and translated into French by Bernard Rochot (Paris: Vrin, 1962). In Pierre Gassendi, Opera omnia, 6 volumes (Lyon: 1658), vol. III.

  38. 38.

    Importantly, while Du Châtelet may believe Descartes is committed to the passivity of matter, this may not be Descartes’ own view. Indeed, Descartes’ Sixth Meditation argument for the existence of body relies upon there being an active principle within material substance as the cause of my ideas of bodies. I am grateful to Eileen O’Neill for bringing this point to my attention.

  39. 39.

    Hagengruber thinks Du Châtelet is committed to ‘innate ideas’ in opposition to Locke, and while I agree that she departs from Locke on this point, I do not think she is thus thrust directly into Descartes’ camp on the issue of nativism (see below). See Ruth Hagengruber, ‘Émilie Du Châtelet between Leibniz and Newton: The Transformation of Metaphysics’ in Émilie Du Châtelet: Between Leibniz and Newton, edited by Ruth Hagengruber (London: Springer, 2012), 1–60.

  40. 40.

    Many thanks to Eileen O’Neill for suggesting various ways of interpreting the principle of contradiction, suggestions that helped clarify my thinking on this aspect of Du Châtelet’s philosophy.

  41. 41.

    For a careful account of Du Châtelet’s metaphysics and relation to mechanics, including difficulties with Du Châtelet’s own characterization of the nature of matter, see Carolyn Iltis, ‘Madame Du Châtelet’s Metaphysics and Mechanics’ Studies in the History of Philosophy of Science 8.1 (1977), 29–48.

  42. 42.

    John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, fourth edition, edited by Peter H. Nidditch (Oxford: Oxford University Press, [1695] 1975, I, ii, §4, p. 49.

  43. 43.

    For an account of the role of Leibniz’s, Wolff’s, and ‘s Gravesande’s philosophies on Du Châtelet’s own thought in the Institutions, see Anne-Lise Rey, ‘La figure du leibnizianisme dans les Institutions de physique’ in Émilie Du Châtalet: éclairages & documents nouveaux, edited by Ulla Kölving and Olivier Courcelle (Ferney-Voltaire: Centre International d’Étude du XVIIIe Siècle, 2008), 231–42.

  44. 44.

    For a detailed analysis of the seventh and eighth chapters of the Institutions in order to make sense of the relation between Leibnizian and Newtonian ideas therein, see Annie Gireau-Geneaux, ‘Mme Du Châtelet entre Leibniz et Newton: matière, force et substance’ in Cirey dans la vie intellectualle: La réception de Newton en France, edited by François de Gandt, in the series Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century (2001): 11, 173–186.

  45. 45.

    See Hutton, ‘Émilie Du Châtelet’s Institutions de physique’, 521ff for a discussion of this point.

  46. 46.

    While I have alluded to different ways in which Du Châtelet uses the principle of sufficient reason throughout this paper, I do not offer a systematic account of her employment of that principle. For one such account, see Paul Veatch Moriarty, ‘The principle of sufficient reason in Du Châtelet’s Institutions’ in Émilie Du Châtelet: rewriting Enlightenment philosophy and science, edited by Judith P. Zinsser and Julie Candler Hayes, in the series Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century 2006:01, 203–225.

  47. 47.

    Spyros Sakellariadis, ‘Descartes’s use of Empirical Data to Test Hypotheses’ Isis 73.1 (1982), 68–76.

  48. 48.

    Vartanian notes that Diderot at least picks up this feature of Cartesian science in the eighteenth century. Vartanian, Diderot and Descartes, pp. 154–5.

AcknowledgementsThis paper was written in 2012, and as such, the thinking herein does not reflect the significant advances made in subsequent understanding of Du Châtelet’s philosophy. I would like to thank Eileen O’Neill, Marcy Lascano, and the audience at the Pacific APA in 2002 for helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper. This paper us dedicated to the memory of Eileen O’Neill, with great affection and appreciation for all she has done for women – past, present, and future – working in philosophy.

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Detlefsen, K. (2019). Du Châtelet and Descartes on the Roles of Hypothesis and Metaphysics in Natural Philosophy. In: O’Neill, E., Lascano, M.P. (eds) Feminist History of Philosophy: The Recovery and Evaluation of Women’s Philosophical Thought. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-18118-5_5

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