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Encyclopedia of Early Modern Philosophy and the Sciences pp 1–10Cite as

Du Châtelet, Émilie (1706–1749)

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Synonyms

Gabrielle-Émilie le Tonnelier de Breteuil; Marquise Du Châtelet-Laumont

Introduction

Of the many outstanding female philosophers of the European Enlightenment, Emilie Du Châtelet excelled as a physicist, a philosopher, and a mathematician, as well as a Bible critic. She was famous in her lifetime and was not completely forgotten thereafter. Among her admirers, correspondents and friends were the most acknowledged scholars of her time, including Voltaire, Clairault, Maupertuis, Diderot, Helvetius, La Mettrie, Buffon, Christian Wolff, Leonard Euler, and Johann II Bernoulli. Her philosophical work enjoyed high reputation and her opus magnum, the Institutions physiques, was translated into Italian and German and proved her to be an intellectual of European stature. Its defense of living forces and its implied forecast into dynamics as well as her methodological grounding of scientific knowledge as hypothetical, impacted philosophy and science. Reality must by nature escape us....

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Humanities, Paderborn University, Paderborn, Germany

    Ruth Edith Hagengruber

Authors
  1. Ruth Edith Hagengruber
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Correspondence to Ruth Edith Hagengruber .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Philosophy, University of Bucharest, Bucharest, Romania

    Dana Jalobeanu

  2. Dept. of Philosophy and Moral Sciences, Ghent University Dept. Philosophy & Moral Sci, Ghent, Oost-Vlaanderen, Belgium

    Charles T. Wolfe

Section Editor information

  1. Institut für Humanwissenschaften, Philosophie, Universität Paderborn, Paderborn, Deutschland

    Ruth Edith Hagengruber

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Hagengruber, R.E. (2021). Du Châtelet, Émilie (1706–1749). In: Jalobeanu, D., Wolfe, C.T. (eds) Encyclopedia of Early Modern Philosophy and the Sciences. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-20791-9_410-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-20791-9_410-1

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