I argue that Émilie Du Châtelet breaks with Christian Wolff regarding the scope and epistemological content of the principle of sufficient reason, despite his influence on her basic ontology and their agreement that the principle of sufficient reason has foundational importance. These differences have decisive consequences for the ways in which Du Châtelet and Wolff conceive of science.

There is a tension in Emilie Du Châtelet’s thought on mathematics. The objects of mathematics are ideal or fictional entities; nevertheless, mathematics is presented as indispensable for an account of the physical world. After outlining Du Châtelet’s position, and showing how she departs from Christian Wolff’s pessimism about Newtonian mathematical physics, I show that the tension in her position is only apparent. Du Châtelet has a worked-out defense of the explanatory and epistemic need for mathematical objects, consistent with their metaphysical (...) nonfundamentality. I conclude by sketching how Du Châtelet’s conception of mathematical indispensability differs interestingly from many contemporary approaches. (shrink)

The Southern Journal of Philosophy, EarlyView.

The following article describes a pilot study on the possible integration of digital historiography into teaching practice. It focuses on Émilie Du Châtelet’s considerations of space and time against the background of Leibniz’s program of analysis situs. Historians have characterized philosophical controversies on space and time as a dichotomy between the absolute and relational concepts of space and time. In response to this, the present case study pursues two aims: First, it shows that the common portrayal simplifies the complex pattern (...) of change and the semantic shift from absolute-relational concepts of space and time to invariance and conservation principles. Second, against this background, I present the Online Reading Guide on Émilie Du Châtelet’s Foundations of Physics, a teaching and research project designed to help navigate Du Châtelet’s Institutions physiques. This project makes Du Châtelet’s important text visible to a broad audience and allows for a more critical and deeper view on classical topics of the history of philosophy and science in a more accessible way than traditional introductions. (shrink)

I begin by outlining Du Châtelet’s ontology of mathematical objects: she is an idealist, and mathematical objects are fictions dependent on acts of abstraction. Next, I consider how this idealism can be reconciled with her endorsement of necessary truths in mathematics, which are grounded in essences that we do not create. Finally, I discuss how mathematics and physics relate within Du Châtelet’s idealism. Because the primary objects of physics are partly grounded in the same kinds of acts as yield mathematical (...) objects, she thinks we are sometimes licensed in drawing conclusions about physical things from mathematical premises. (shrink)