The Newton Wars and the Beginning of the French Enlightenment

by J.B. Shank

Nothing is considered more natural than the connection between Isaac Newton’s science and the modernity that came into being during the eighteenth-century Enlightenment. Terms like “Newtonianism” are routinely taken as synonyms for “Enlightenment” and “modern” thought, yet the particular conjunction of these terms has a history full of accidents and contingencies. Modern physics, for example, was not the determined result of the rational unfolding of Newton’s scientific work in the eighteenth century, nor was the Enlightenment the natural and inevitable consequence of Newton’s eighteenth-century reception. Each of these outcomes, in fact, was a contingent event produced by the particular historical developments of the early eighteenth century.

A comprehensive study of public culture, The Newton Wars and the Beginning of the French Enlightenment digs below the surface of the commonplace narratives that link Newton with Enlightenment thought to examine the actual historical changes that brought them together in eighteenth-century time and space. Drawing on the full range of early modern scientific sources, from studied scientific treatises and academic papers to book reviews, commentaries, and private correspondence, J. B. Shank challenges the widely accepted claim that Isaac Newton’s solitary genius is the reason for his iconic status as the father of modern physics and the philosophe movement.

Genres: History Of Science, Philosophy

464 pages, Hardcover

First published September 1, 2008

Reviews

[Ed]

This long, complex, scholarly book offers a narrative of role of the introduction of Newtonianism into France in the creation of the Enlightenment. It aims to be a Foucauldian narrative, which refuses to see ideas simply evolving and insists on presenting a full social, political as well as intellectual story. After reading thematic books about the Enlightenment, I very much appreciated this detailed narrative. I feel much more aware of what was at stake during the first half of the eighteenth century. I was particularly interested in the intense and prolonged rear-guard struggles that the Cartesians put up. I was intrigued by how incomprehensible Newton's ideas were to many. This book presents a very interesting picture of Voltaire as a serious intellectual, not simply a gadfly. The book also does justice to du Châtelet and Maupertuis. Given my interests in Vitalism, the book was helpful in placing Leibniz's ideas in the context of the Newton Wars. Personally,however, Diderot, who comes into the story only at the end, stole the show.

[Lauren Albert]

This book and I did not get along. It was partly my fault--I showed my boredom by yawning over dinner with it and by skimming. But it was also its fault--it had a tendency to repeat itself and to go on for too long. Clearly Match.com would not have put us together. I don't usually find myself put off by very academic books but I could not cope with the discussions of 17th-century "attraction" theory (aka "gravity"). And the mathematics made my eyes glaze over. We decided to separate amicably so that it could find the right reader for itself.

“New philosophical ideas themselves, in fact, be they Newtonian or otherwise, were not even as crucial as one might think to the beginning of the French Enlightenment since many of them were already commonplace when Voltaire put them to use. Rather, what opened the French Enlightenment in 1734 was the particular way that Voltaire deployed these philosophical ideas, and the particular self-fashioning he accomplished with them, a self-fashioning that led to the definition of a new kind of critical, libertarian intellectual in France. Ultimately, this new, liberation intellectual style, and the social assumptions that made it possible, cohered in the construction of a new persona, the philosophe. This persona in turn made possible the French Enlightenment that followed in its wake.” 31

[Glenn]

A thorough, scholarly, in depth review of the beginning of the Enlightenment in France. Even the author said it was a sleeper, but it heavily researched and certainly a solid contribution for someone deeply interested in that era.