Project Description

This project will be the first systematic study of Du Châtelet’s account of causation and laws of nature. It will thereby make an important contribution to existing scholarship on Du Châtelet. This project will not only add to our understanding of early modern natural philosophy. By studying the relation between metaphysics of nature and science of nature, it will also make a contribution to debates in contemporary analytic philosophy, especially those concerned with whether metaphysics is guided by the best natural science available or whether metaphysics provides a deeper level of understanding reality.

This research project is at the forefront of better understanding Du Châtelet’s account of causation and laws of nature in the context of eighteenth-century German metaphysics and French science of nature. Du Châtelet’s philosophising falls into a period dominated by the metaphysics of Leibniz, Wolff and their followers and by the new science of nature of Newton and his followers. Du Châtelet, however, does not just combine these two strands of philosophy but paves her own way. She took inspiration from both strands but sought to solve the most pressing problems in metaphysics of nature and science of nature in an original way.

While important contributions to the study of other areas of Du Châtelet’s philosophy have been made, the topic of causation and laws nature, which are essential for her natural philosophy, have received less attention. This research project employs a chronological and developmental approach in that it reconstructs Du Châtelet’s intellectual development concerning the topics of causation and laws of nature over time. It pays close attention to her philosophical and scientific works, especially the Institutions de physique (1740/1742), her correspondence with philosophers such as Voltaire and Maupertuis, but also to the philosophical-historical context of her writings, especially that of eighteenth-century German metaphysics.