The Enlightenment's Most Dangerous Woman

August 19, 2024
Duke University philosophy professor Janiak (Newton) delivers an uneven biography of French philosopher and scientist Émilie du Châtelet (1706–1749). While du Châtelet lived in an era that prized the contributions of individual philosophers—a narrative of “great minds” that often translated to a celebration of great men—she viewed science as a “collaborative endeavor,” according to Janiak. He credits du Châtelet with mediating debates between influential thinkers, including Isaac Newton and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz; framing philosophy as a “historically situated” discipline, which “became a defining element of the Enlightenment,” rather than the study of “perennial questions”; and promoting a pluralistic idea of science that encouraged independent thinking. In cautioning against pledging allegiance to the era’s great minds, du Châtelet cast doubt on the notion of canonicity itself and threatened the intellectual order, Janiak writes. The account brings to life the vibrant intellectual milieu in which du Châtelet worked and sheds light on how her ideas challenged male-dominated notions of intellectual life, but the analysis can feel repetitive and unstructured, as it returns again and again to du Châtelet’s defining work, Institutions of Physics. The result is an ambitious if imperfectly executed reconsideration of a lesser-known thinker.