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Newton’s Mathematical Physics in the Eighteenth Century: Circulations, Appropriations, Resistances
This conference contributes to the renewed exploration of the complex processes through which Newton’s natural philosophy was adopted, debated and transformed in the eighteenth century. Focusing on the mathematical treatment of physical phenomena, the contributed papers will investigate how eighteenth-century philosophers and savants discussed the authority of mathematical reasoning in natural philosophy, and how their positions reflected broader tensions regarding expertise, education, and the societal roles of science. By adopting a longue durée perspective, the conference encourages to think the multifarious circulations, appropriations, and resistances to Newton’s mathematical physics from the publication of the first edition of the Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (1687) up to the end of the Ancien Régime. We warmly welcome submissions on marginal figures and contexts (regions, institutions, schools) that reflect in original ways on how to situate Newton’s legacy within the plural and fragmen
PROGRAM
Monday 12 October
9:30-10:00 Welcome and opening remarks
Session 1 The Continental Newton: French and Dutch Perspectives
10:00-10:50 Andrew Janiak (Duke University), Émilie Du Châtelet and Continental
Newtonianism
10:50-11:40 Steffen Ducheyne (VUB), New perspectives on Herman Boerhaave’s
appropriation of Newton’s natural philosophy
11:40-12:00 Coffee break
Session 2 Against Newton: Eighteenth-Century Perspectives
12:00-12:50 Moti Feingold (Caltech), The Grounds for Prejudice: Varieties of Eighteenth-
Century Anti-Newtonianism
12:50-14:00 Lunch break
Session 3 Receptions of Newton in the Franco-German Enlightenment
14:00-14:50 Guillem Sales Vilalta (CSIC Madrid), Between Experiment and Calculation:
Christian Wolff and the Newtonian Challenge in the German Enlightenment
14:50-15:40 Christian Leduc (Université de Montréal), Maupertuis and Replicability
15:40-16:00 Coffee break
Session 4 Extending Mathematics and Mechanics: Adaptations of Newton’s
Mathematical Physics
16:00-16:50 Henny Blomme (ULB) From Gravitation to Electricity: Franz Ulrich Theodor
Aepinus and the Extension of Newtonian Mathematical Physics
16:50-17:40 Michael Friedman (Universität Bonn) Agriculture and Mathematics in the 18th
Century: Or, Why Should Farmers Employ the Newtonian Laws of Motion?
Tuesday 13 October
Session 5 Colours and light: Newtonian Optics in the Eighteenth-Century
10:00-10:50 Friedrich Steinle (TU Berlin), Newton’s mathematization of colours and its 18th
century reverberations
10:50-11:40 Maja Rausch (Philipps-Universität Marburg), Refracting Nature: Newtonian
Optics and the Poetic Negotiation of Knowledge in Barthold Heinrich Brockes
11:40-12:00 Coffee break
Session 6 Laypeople and Mavericks: Learning and Contesting Newton’s
Mathematical Physics
12:00-12:50 Adrien Miqueu (Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen), Silence and Ridicule. How to
join the discussion on gravity in the 18th century
12:50-14:00 Lunch break
14:00-14:50 Ilaria Ampollini (Università degli Studi di Ferrara), Learning Newton by
amusement. Ludic practices, board games and the dissemination of physics (1770-1820)
14:50-15:10 Coffee break
Session 7 Peripheral Knowledge and Marginal Circulations: From Provincial
France to the New World
15:10-16:00 Marco Storni (ULB), The Long Life of Provincial Cartesianism: Resisting
Newton in Eighteenth-Century Toulouse
16:00-16:50 Sebastián Molina-Betancur (University of Oxford), Marginal Newtons: The
Circulations and Appropriations of Newtonianism in Late Eighteenth-Century New Granada
16:50-17:00 Concluding remarks and farewell
Contact : Marco.Storni@ulb.be
Arnaud.Pelletier@ulb.be
www.renew18.be
ULB, Campus Solbosch, room Henri Janne (S15.331)