Uneasy Genius: The Life And Work Of Pierre Duhem

1. Front Matter

   Pages I-XII

   PDF

2. Young Pierre

   • Stanley L. Jaki

   Pages 1-36

3. The Normalien

   • Stanley L. Jaki

   Pages 37-69

4. Lecturer in Lille

   • Stanley L. Jaki

   Pages 71-106

5. In Transit in Rennes

   • Stanley L. Jaki

   Pages 107-122

6. Bordeaux: A Road to Paris

   • Stanley L. Jaki

   Pages 123-170

7. Bordeaux: Journey’s End

   • Stanley L. Jaki

   Pages 171-219

8. In Memoriam

   • Stanley L. Jaki

   Pages 221-257

9. Duhem the Physicist

   • Stanley L. Jaki

   Pages 259-317

10. Duhem the Philosopher

    • Stanley L. Jaki

    Pages 319-373

11. Duhem the Historian

    • Stanley L. Jaki

    Pages 375-436

12. Back Matter

    Pages 437-472

    PDF

A hundred years have now gone by since in the midsummer of 1882 Pierre Duhem, a graduate of College Stanislas, completed with brilliant success his entrance exams to the Ecole Normale Superieure and embarked on his career as a theoretical physicist. His father, a textile salesman, hoped that Hierre would pursue a career in business, one of the few professional fields where perhaps he would not have succeeded. Not that young Duhem lacked sense for the practical. He could have easily made a name for himself as an artist had he developed professionally his skill to draw portraits and landscapes. His ability to make a point and his readiness to join in a debate, could have earned him fame as a lawyer. A potential actor was in sight when he entertained friends with mimicry. That as a student of physics he entered and stayed first in his class at the Ecole Normale, did not thwart his talents for the life sciences. No less a biologist than Pasteur tried to obtain Duhem for assistant. His command of Greek and Latin would have secured him a career as a classicist. He was a Frenchman, not to be met too often, whose rightful ad­ miration for and mastery of his native tongue, did not prove a barrier to the major modern languages. As one who taught himself the complex art of medieval paleo­ graphy, he could easily have mastered the many auxiliary sciences needed by a consummate historian.

• Inuit
• art
• catholics
• continuity
• event
• french
• growth
• history of literature
• landscape
• metaphysics
• mind
• philosophy
• physics
• renaissance
• science

` Uneasy Genius is a tribute not only to the physicist, philosopher, and historian who was Pierre Duhem, but also to the historian, philosopher and physicist who is Stanley L. Jaki. '
John Lyon in ISIS

` On reste confondu devant le livre de Stanley L. Jaki, devant son érudition et l'accumulation de faits . . . Il a tout lu, tout fouillé, tout dépouillé! C'est un oeuvre magistrale qui ne laisse plus rien à écrire sur Pierre Duhem. '
Analyses Bibliographiques

` Ouvrage exceptionel . . . ; cette richesse de la documentation vient étayer chaque affirmation de ses dix chapitres. '
Paul Germain, Secrétaire Perpétuel de l'Académie des Sciences

` . . . This is a book on an `uneasy genius' that deserves to be chewed and digested. '
H. W. Paul in Nature

Stanley L. Jaki, a Hungarian-born Catholic priest of the Benedictine Order, is Distinguished Professor at Seton Hall University, South Orange, New Yersey. With doctorates in theology and physics, he has for the past twenty-five years specialized in the history and philosophy of science. The author of twenty books and over seventy articles, he has served as Gifford Lecturer at the University of Edinburgh and as Fremantle Lecturer at Balliol College, Oxford, Membre correspondant of the Académie Nationale des Sciences, Belles-Lettres et Arts of Bordeaux, he is the recipient of the Lecomte du Noüy Prize for 1970 and of the Templeton Prize for 1987.

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