Abstract
In the first half of the Eighteenth century, in the path of the ongoing scientific revolution, it has in continental philosophy, a strong discussion about the better method for achieve knowledge. One way to reconstruct Émilie Du Châtelet’s philosophy is to look at her work as a search for the founding of a new method for natural philosophy. In this paper, I will draw a note about her epistemology, specially, I will present a view about her comprehension of the experience as a source of knowledge. The paper has four main sections: (i) a brief introduction and overview on the relation between Science and Philosophy in the 18th century; (ii) a discussion about the use of experiments as a source of knowledge in Émilie Du Châtelet’s works, specially, in the Dissertation; (iii) a defense on an epistemological oriented reading of the principles of knowledge as the contribution of reason in her Foundations; (iv) an attempt to restore experience as a source of knowledge by considering the role of the principle of sufficient reason in experience, using examples from her Commentary.
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Notes
- 1.
Steven Shapin maintains that not only did what we call science means “natural philosophy” on that time, but even the word “scientist” was invented only in 19th century (Shapin 1996, p. 5, n. 3).
- 2.
According to Friedman: “Descartes, in particular, was centrally involved with both revolutionary enterprises, which were by no means clearly distinguished at the time” (Friedman 2006, p. 305).
- 3.
An example of Du Châtelet’s critique to Descartes’ system of world, which is also an illustration of her agreement to Newton’s natural philosophy, is the Lettre sur les élements de la philosophie de Newton published in Journal des Sçavants, 1738 edition (Hutton, 2004). This letter can be found on Gallica through the link: https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k56587q/f526.image Access in 08/05/2020.
- 4.
In her Foundations, Du Châtelet criticizes Descartes’s use of the clarity and evidence principles as good guides for our reasonings, that is, to obtain truth in science (Du Châtelet, 2009, p. 125–6).
- 5.
The scientific source of Du Châtelet’s thinking become clear if we consider the motivations of both her Commentary to Newton’s Principia and her Dissertation (more about this in the following).
- 6.
On this approach, an interesting way to read the Foundations of Physics would be situated it as a text which has two kinds of objectives. On one hand, the scientific ones, on the other, the philosophical ones. In this case, even the title of the book should be discussed. There is a lot of controversy about the best translation for the title of Du Châtelet’s book. Firstly, because institutions can mean “foundation” as well “creation of something” or “lessons”. Secondly, because the word “physique” in the eighteenth-century French means the branch of Philosophy occupied with the study of the natural world. In that sense, this word would be the French equivalent for the English expression “Natural Philosophy” (Du Châtelet, 2009, p. 66, translator's note). So, it is even possible the following translation for her book: Lessons on natural philosophy.
- 7.
For a different view, consider the book of Harari (2004).
- 8.
That is the reason why the author defends that the problem of induction as exposed by David Hume is a typical modern problem, being just a minor remark in Aristotelian tradition (Dear, 1995, p. 21).
- 9.
Voltaire come back from his exile in Leiden, in the year of 1737, very enthusiastic about experimental philosophy. In Leiden, he was acquainted with the Newtonian disciples Petrus von Musschenbroek and Willem Jacob Gravessande (Zinsser, 2007).
- 10.
Thus, it is not accurate to say that Du Châtelet shares Voltaire's view of Descartes and Newton (Locqueneux, 1995, p. 865), since Du Châtelet disagrees with Voltaire in many episodes, for example, in the case of the attributions of the properties of matter to fire. In this case, to disagree with Voltaire is to deny Newton’s view.
- 11.
Both texts, although they were not the winners, were published in a special and limited edition (which was relatively common) from 1739 with an errata to the original text (which was not common and was a privilege granted to the Marquise). From this fact, we can infer how important his influence was in the scientific and philosophical milieu of his time.
- 12.
In this case, because Du Châtelet’s employment of induction is not based on an exhaustive list of experiments (which is impossible), her use of induction is not a case of a perfect induction. Likewise, it is not an instance of intuitive induction, since she is not dealing with some kind of direct insight. The only kind of induction that can be approximated with Du Châtelet’s use is dialectical induction.
- 13.
This is an argument to consider Du Châtelet’s use of experiments as premises of inductions in the sense of an Aristotelian dialectical induction, namely, experiments can lead to probable knowledge, but not to certain knowledge. In the last Section of this paper, I will offer a reason to reject this interpretation.
- 14.
Katherine Brading notes the asymmetry between acceptance and rejection of a hypothesis by experience (2019, p. 44), which appears in the following excerpt from the famous chapter Of Hypotheses of his Foundations of Physics, where Du Châtelet demanded: “One experiment is not enough for a hypothesis to be accepted, but a single one suffices to reject it when it is contrary to it” (Du Châtelet, 2009, p. 152).
- 15.
In the Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, the monumental work edited by Denis Diderot et Jean Le Ron D’Alembert in the 18th Century (1751–1772), D'Alembert tells the story of the slow introduction of experimental philosophy in France, which ends up in the creation of a chair of Experimental Philosophy at the University of Paris by the King of France (D’Alembert, 1756, p. 298a–301b).
- 16.
In the original text, they appear in the inverse order.
- 17.
According to Judith Zinsser, it was because this disagreement that the Dissertation was born in the first place (2007).
- 18.
After the consideration of reason as a source of knowledge, I will return to that question aiming to provide a better understanding of the relation between experience and reason as sources of knowledge for Du Châtelet.
- 19.
It is worth noting that for the main objectives of this paper, I am not making a difference between experience, experiment, observation and demonstration. The rationale for this is that all of them are tokens of knowledge acquired by experience, so all of them can be generally considered under the umbrella of experience. I believe, however, that a more detailed research should be conducted to consider fine distinctions herein.
- 20.
This would be the case if she subscribes the third sense of induction for Aristotle, for intuitive induction is the kind of induction which is based in a grasp of the universal which resides on the particular.
- 21.
Detlefsen (2018) defends an interpretation according to which Du Châtelet’s use of principles do not compromise her with an absolute innatism in the sense just mentioned. My interpretation pursues that path.
- 22.
To be just, the marquise considers also two another principle, the principle of indiscernible and the law of continuity, both follow from the principle of sufficient reason.
- 23.
That perspective is not original, once it is defended, for example, by Katherine Brading (Brading, 2019).
- 24.
More about the Wolffian heritage in Du Châtelet’s thought, see Detflesen (2018).
- 25.
For a different view, Robert Locqueneux presents the principles as an essentially metaphysical (Locqueneux, 1995).
- 26.
As the very title of the chapter indicates, the principles are principles of our knowledge.
- 27.
Moreover, to explore the epistemological sense in which the principle of sufficient reason is a foundation of contingent truths can lead us to the question about the structure of knowledge itself. At first sight, stating that the principle of sufficient reason is a principle on which all contingent truths depend could compromise Du Chatelet’s view with foundationalism, because it would be a reason to assume that Du Châtelet’s project was to provide metaphysical foundations to Newtonian physics. If Du Châtelet understands that physics needs a metaphysical foundation, then, she understands that knowledge itself is structured like a building (or tree): the metaphysics being the foundation which sustains the floors (the varied sciences). There are a lot of support for this reading in Du Châtelet’s work. For that reason, it is not surprising that this reading is widely supported by specialized literature. Katherine Brading name this approach as “the received view” (2019, p. 8). But, I think, along with Brading (2019) and Detflesen (2018), that it is possible, in the understanding of this principle, to ascribe an epistemic (or rational) role to the principles of our knowledge (namely, the principle of contradiction and the principle of sufficient reason). Moreover, I think that, if we emphasize this principle as a rational guide, we can maintain that all contingent truths depend on the principle of sufficient reason because without this principle we do not have any reason to seeking after truth in science, rather than because physics needs a metaphysical foundation in the sense defended by the received view. A consequence of such an approach is that Du Châtelet’s view about the structure of knowledge could be free from any compromise with foundationalism. However, developing the question about the foundation of knowledge extrapolate the aim of this paper.
- 28.
In her book, Katherine Brading appoint four different topics in commenting the same passages (Brading, 2019, p. 36). For our objectives, which are limited, it suffices highlight the shared character of Du Châtelet’s argumentation: all the arguments are involved in prove that the principle of sufficient reason has a role to guarantee knowledge in science.
- 29.
Again, Katherine Brading maintains that the “PSR is introduced in the Foundations as a principle whose acceptance is required in order to underwrite the very possibility of scientific theorizing, and whose implementation within theorizing is required as a component of Du Châtelet’s methodology” (2019, p. 39). In the interpretation I am pursuing, the PSR is not only necessary to undertake the possibility of scientific theorizing, and as such as a “component” of Du Châtelet’s method. My reading is slightly different from Brading’s point of view. My approach does not read Du Châtelet’s methodology as divided into two parts; it is not a two-pronged methodology, with experience on one hand and principles on the other; rather, it is considered as an organic method in which the principles of reason must be observed as guiding the experimentation itself.
- 30.
I believe more research is needed to completely understand the normative claims, especially, the epistemic normative claims, underlying Du Châtelet’s work. Another text where the normative side of her epistemology emerges is her Essay on Optics’ Introduction: “Truth is one—and once it is discovered, there is nothing to do but follow it” (Du Châtelet, 2019, p. 7).
- 31.
Judith Zinsser noted that: “By “properties” Du Châtelet means primary constituent aspects of a being; “modes”, then, are secondary manifestations or characteristics. These distinctions come from her reading of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716) and represent an addition to the 1774 version” (Du Châtelet, 2009, p. 63, n. 25).
- 32.
Again according to Zinsser, demonstration is “the replication of someone else’s experiment” (Du Châtelet, 2009, p. 148, n. 71).
- 33.
On the Enciclopédie, both the word “experience” and “experimental” refer directly to natural philosophy (D’Alembert, 1756).
- 34.
Another way of looking at this problem is to replace the word “reason” with the word “cause”. In this case, the problem would deal mainly with metaphysical issues. I do not deny that Du Châtelet has that kind of concern. However, as I am here in a reconstructive approach, I believe that it is possible to shed light only on the epistemological side of the problem, leaving (at least for the purposes of this paper) the metaphysical aside.
- 35.
According to Brading: “Where Hume, according to many interpretations, found nothing to tie events together, Du Châtelet responded to Pemberton’s plea that we avoid outright skepticism by accepting PSR as a prerequisite for the possibility of knowledge: It is the means by which we tie the succession of events together, such that we can reason from a state of affairs at one time to states of affairs at other times” (2019, p. 36). In this sense, the principle of sufficient reason is, before all else, a guide for experimentation. And that is why, my reading of Du Châtelet’s method for scientific knowledge is different from Katherine Brading’s one. If only with the PSR we can consider that the events are tied together, and that consideration is essential to make sense of experience for philosophical and scientific purposes, than it means that for Du Châtelet the PSR is essential to experience. The corollary is that in her method the use of principles is not another side of her method, but it is organically tied with experimentation itself.
- 36.
To assume that the world is constant is important for epistemological reasons. That is because, for Du Châtelet, without this presupposition, we cannot truly use experience as a source of knowledge, seeing as we do have no reason to presuppose that the regularity we observed yesterday would remain tomorrow: “If we tried to deny this great principle, we would fall into strange contradictions. For as soon as one accepts that something may happen without sufficient reason, one cannot be sure of anything, for example, that a thing is the same as it was a moment before, since this thing could change at any moment into another of a different kind; thus truths, for us, would only exist for an instant” (Du Châtelet, 2009, p. 129). This means that, beyond the question about the importance of a metaphysical foundation for science (Hagengruber, 2012, p. 9), for Du Châtelet, there is an epistemological reason why it is important to have them ruling the scientific method.
- 37.
The intelligibility of the world is important for an epistemological reason too. If we cannot say that our understanding of the system of the world is coherent, how can we expect to make science? Science is an enterprise with an aim: to discover the truth, to be certain of something. If there is no truth, no certainty, because the world cannot be known, there is no longer any room for science: “[…] but if the principle of sufficient reason does not apply, my certainty becomes a chimera, since everything could have been thrown into confusion in my room, without anyone having entered who was able to turn it upside down” (Du Châtelet, 2009, p. 129).
- 38.
The principle of sufficient reason is a supposition necessary to make experimental method valid. Of course, no one is required to assume the principle of sufficient reason. But, if someone chooses to deny it, it remains difficult to do science from experimentation, since it will remain problematic to make universal claims based on particular facts.
- 39.
It is worth noting that this approach to experiments and the consideration of the regularity of nature is an innovation of modern natural philosophy. As Peter Dear shows, scholastic philosophy employs the notion of a “monster” (or miracle) to illustrate that experience can deviate from its route. A monster is an event which does not follow the regularity of nature and one classical example in the history of physics is the issue about the ontological status of the comets. If nature is not constant, an experiment or observation in which a deviation is shown cannot count as a proof that the theory failed (Dear, 1995, p. 20–1).
- 40.
Therefore, the way I see it, for Du Châtelet, experience is not only “a means of demonstrating a known truth” (Zinsser, 2009, p. 107). The experience, understood as experimentation, demonstration, and observation, is much more than just that. To summarize my approach, experience can be regarded as a source of knowledge if we accept that it is guided by the principle of sufficient reason.
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Acknowledgements
The following text is the result of further work on Du Châtelet’s ideas about epistemological questions, following the presentation of its initial version at the First International Conference Women in Modern Philosophy that took place at the State University of Rio de Janeiro (UERJ) in Brazil.
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da Silva, M.S. (2022). Notes on Émilie Du Châtelet’s Epistemology: Experience as a Source of Knowledge. In: Lopes, C., Ribeiro Peixoto, K., Pricladnitzky, P. (eds) Latin American Perspectives on Women Philosophers in Modern History. Women in the History of Philosophy and Sciences, vol 13. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-00288-5_9
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