[Sci-tech-public] Sahin Seminar on Tuesday, March 3, 2009

[Margo Collett]

Sahin Seminar Series
Massachusetts Institute of Technology

“Making Enlightenment Newtonianism
in France c. 1700”

J. B. Shank
Associate Professor of History, University of Minnesota

The eighteenth-century French philosophes claimed that they were  
responsible for introducing the French to the light of Newtonian  
science, and a still powerful tradition of historiography echoes their  
view. This lecture will challenge that account by examining the  
immediate reception of Newton's Principia in 1690s Paris. It will show  
that rather than being ignorant of Newton's work, or prejudicially  
aligned against it because of their Cartesian loyalties, French men  
and women embraced a version of Newton's science that became  
foundational to later Enlightenment French science.

Tuesday, March 3, 2009

Building E51 Room 149

Corner of Amherst and Wadsworth Streets, Cambridge, MA

4:30 – 6:00 pm

  Free and open to the public.  For more information, contact Margo  
Collett at mcollett at mit.edu. This lecture

is sponsored by MIT's History Faculty and the Program in Science,  
Technology and Society.
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