Du Ch'telet and Descartes on the Roles of Hypothesis and Metaphysics in Natural Philosophy

In Eileen O’Neill & Marcy P. Lascano (eds.), Feminist History of Philosophy: The Recovery and Evaluation of Women’s Philosophical Thought. Springer, NM 87747, USA: Springer. pp. 97-127 (2019)
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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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Karen Detlefsen
University of Pennsylvania

Citations of this work

Du Châtelet on Sufficient Reason and Empirical Explanation.Aaron Wells - 2021 - Southern Journal of Philosophy 59 (4):629-655.
Science and the Principle of Sufficient Reason: Du Châtelet contra Wolff.Aaron Wells - 2023 - Hopos: The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science 13 (1):24–53.
Émilie Du Châtelet on Illusions.Marcy P. Lascano - 2021 - Journal of the American Philosophical Association 7 (1):1-19.
Descartes on the Theory of Life and Methodology in the Life Sciences.Karen Detlefsen - 2015 - In Peter Distelzweig, Evan Ragland & Benjamin Goldberg (eds.), Early Modern Medicine and Natural Philosophy. Dordrecht: Springer. pp. 141-72.

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