The Man Who Flattened the Earth: Maupertuis and the Sciences in the Enlightenment

by Mary Terrall

Self-styled adventurer, literary wit, philosopher, and statesman of science, Pierre-Louis Moreau de Maupertuis (1698-1759) stood at the center of Enlightenment science and culture. Offering an elegant and accessible portrait of this remarkable man, Mary Terrall uses the story of Maupertuis's life, self-fashioning, and scientific works to explore what it meant to do science and to be a man of science in eighteenth-century Europe.

Beginning his scientific career as a mathematician in Paris, Maupertuis entered the public eye with a much-discussed expedition to Lapland, which confirmed Newton's calculation that the earth was flattened at the poles. He also made significant, and often intentionally controversial, contributions to physics, life science, navigation, astronomy, and metaphysics. Called to Berlin by Frederick the Great, Maupertuis moved to Prussia to preside over the Academy of Sciences there. Equally at home in salons, cafés, scientific academies, and royal courts, Maupertuis used his social connections and his printed works to enhance a carefully constructed reputation as both a man of letters and a man of science. His social and institutional affiliations, in turn, affected how Maupertuis formulated his ideas, how he presented them to his contemporaries, and the reactions they provoked.

Terrall not only illuminates the life and work of a colorful and important Enlightenment figure, but also uses his story to delve into many wider issues, including the development of scientific institutions, the impact of print culture on science, and the interactions of science and government. Smart and highly readable, Maupertuis will appeal to anyone interested in eighteenth-century science and culture.


“Terrall’s work is scholarship in the best sense. Her explanations of arcane 18th-century French physics, mathematics, astronomy, and biology are among the most lucid available in any language.”—Virginia Dawson , American Historical Review


Winner of the 2003 Pfizer Award from the History of Science Society

Genres: History, Science, History Of Science

468 pages, Paperback

First published December 15, 2002

About the author

Mary Terrall (April 10, 1952 – September 11, 2023) was an American academic and science historian. She specialized in the 18th century.

Reviews

[Annika · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Man Who Flattened the Earth is a biography of an eighteenth-century scientist, Pierre Maupertuis. Now largely forgotten, in his own time Maupertuis was a celebrity within the Republic of Letters for an adventurous journey to northern Sweden to prove the Newtonian prediction that the world should bulge near the equator, writing science texts for a popular audience, and leveraging intellectual squabbles and controversial speculations to increase his notoriety. He was also friends, enemies, and/or frenemies with some of the most notable scientific names of the day, like Euler, Lagrange, Cassini, and multiple Bernoullis. Maupertuis was an active part of the Enlightenment salon scene in Paris. He served both the French state and Prussian king Frederick the Great, thus becoming caught between countries during the Seven Years' War. Besides his many contributions to math and physics, Maupertuis also found time to explore problems of heredity and reproduction, coming incredibly close to the idea of evolution. He argued that new species arose over time and almost used the phrase "survival of the fittest" in his explanation. You're left wondering how on earth this man has been forgotten.

All this is to say that Maupertuis makes a great case study. Terrall uses his exciting and multi-faceted biography to explore the state of science in the eighteenth century: the shift from individual patronage of intellectuals to state patronage, the tension between absolutism (doing science for the state) and the republic of letters (doing science for a pan-European community of intellectuals and for the general human good), the tension between seeking truth for its own sake and seeking status and reputation, and the quarrel between the Newtonian and Leibnizian camps (which, it turns out, went far beyond who discovered calculus first. It extended into their differing philosophical and metaphysical views, polarizing the academic community into two warring factions).

If you're interested in the history of science, I highly recommend the book! You'll get fascinating anecdotes about famous mathematicians and scientists--who knew they were all so petty! (At the same time, however, I was left incredibly impressed by the complexity of their arguments. It's fascinating how much they were able to hypothesize about physics, astronomy, and biology given the limited evidence they had.) My one quibble with the book is that at times I thought Terrall was speculating a little too much about Maupertuis' motivations for becoming a mathematician and scientist. She often suggests that his main concern was fame and status rather than an actual interest in the subject matter that he was writing about. I was certainly convinced by her evidence that Maupertuis was ambitious, egoistic, and skilled at intentional self-promotion. However, that doesn't preclude the possibility that he also genuinely cared about science and mathematics, and Terrall didn't cite any sources that directly denied that Maupertuis was lying about his interest in science or only saw it as a job. Maupertuis' own words suggest that he was genuinely interested in the intellectual problems at hand, even if he did also want to promote himself.

[Ed · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a clearly written biography of a man who was involved in some of the most important intellectual controversies of the eighteenth century. Maupertuis did travel to northern Scandinavia to make measurements that demonstrated predictions from Newton's theory of gravity rather than Descartes vortex theory. He argued for the theory of least action, which is important in mechanics and was involved in debates about what distinguishes living things from non-living. Terrall explains these ideas clearly, helping me better understand some issues that I had had difficulty with. She provides a good idea of what scholarly work was like in an era of absolutist monarchs. If you are interested in these issues this is a book you should read. My only beef is that having made the case that self-promotion was necessary in Maupertuis world, she keeps reminding the reader what a self-promoter he was.

[Ben · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great slice of life during the time period following the birth of science.