Gabrielle Émilie, Marquise du Châtelet

French writer and scholar

• Born: December 17, 1706
• Birthplace: Paris, France
• Died: September 10, 1749
• Place of death: Lunéville, Meurthe-et-Moselle, France

Largely self-educated, du Châtelet produced the definitive French translation of Sir Isaac Newton’s Principia as well as several scientific and cultural treatises of her own.

Early Life

The marquise du Châtelet (mahr-keez dew shaht-leh), the daughter of Louis-Nicholas, baron de Breteuiland, and Alexandra-Elisabeth de Froulay, spent her early years learning the ways of aristocratic life in the court of Louis XIV, where her father held several lucrative positions. As a girl, she received lessons in fencing, riding, and gymnastics and discovered her intellectual gifts, as indicated by mastery of English, Italian, Spanish, Greek, and Latin and by her interests in mathematics and metaphysics.

Not particularly attractive as a child, she blossomed into a beauty by the age of sixteen, when her father introduced her at court. At this time, she also began to read the works of René Descartes and became engaged in discussions of his philosophy with professors at the Sorbonne. At the age of nineteen, she entered into a marriage of convenience to the marquis Florent-Claude du Châtelet-Lomont, a military man with whom she had nothing in common. She bore a daughter in 1726 and sons in 1727 and 1733.

As was tolerated at the time, she took on a succession of lovers, including for a time her lifelong friend, the duc de Richelieu, a noted French statesman. During the course of their yearlong affair, which began in 1730, Richelieu encouraged du Châtelet to pursue her intellectual interests. She began to work on mathematical theorems and studied advanced physics and mathematics in private tutorials with members of the Royal Academy of Sciences. She also engaged in serious efforts to translate Latin poetry into French. About 1733, she began a long affair with Voltaire, the famous philosophe. Converted to the theories of physics of Sir Isaac Newton during a trip to England, Voltaire introduced du Châtelet to two French Newtonians, Pierre Louis de Maupertuis in 1734 and Alexis-Claude Clairaut during the 1740’s, both of whom became her tutors. Voltaire and du Châtelet retired to the du Châtelet estate in Cirey, with du Châtelet’s husband accepting a ménage à trois. Together, Voltaire and Madame du Châtelet threw themselves into studies that made Cirey an intellectual center.

Life’s Work

At Cirey, du Châtelet and Voltaire pursued a variety of subjects, on which du Châtelet wrote several unpublished manuscripts. One was a free translation of Bernard Mandeville’s The Fable of the Bees: Or, Private Vices, Public Benefits (1714), a work on moral philosophy to which she added her own reflections and points of view. The next year, 1736, she and Voltaire worked on Grammaire raisonée (reasoned grammar), of which the three extant chapters written by du Châtelet contain arguments that language should be considered a branch of logic.

As biblical criticism was popular during the eighteenth century, du Châtelet and Voltaire developed an interest in critical Deism. A five-volume manuscript written by du Châtelet, Examen de la Genèse (examination of Genesis), provided a thorough critique of the entire Bible. Copies were circulated, though no one attributed its authorship to du Châtelet. Toward the end of her life, she wrote another manuscript, Essai sur le bonheur (1797; a discourse on happiness), addressed to the elite of society.

Du Châtelet published several scientific works. Through her tutors and self-study, she acquired the same knowledge of analytic geometry and differential and integral calculus as many members of the Academy of Sciences, from which women were excluded. As her knowledge of mathematics soon exceeded Voltaire’s, she provided him with the mathematical information necessary for his Eléments de la philosophie de Newton (1736; Elements of Sir Isaac Newton’s Philosophy, 1738).

In 1737, the Academy of Sciences announced a competition to investigate the nature of heat and fire. In order not to anger Voltaire, who had decided to enter the contest, du Châtelet secretly worked on the questions posed by the academy, though she never tested her hypothesis in the laboratory. Neither du Châtelet nor Voltaire won, but both garnered honorable mentions. Once the competition was over, du Châtelet informed Voltaire of her entry, and he arranged for the publication of her essay, Dissertation sur la nature et la propagation du feu (1739; essay on the nature and propagation of fire), as well as of his.

Du Châtelet’s approach to physics began to diverge from Voltaire’s, as she was interested in the metaphysical underpinnings of science. In 1737, she began to work on Institutions de physique (1740; lessons in physics), a book designed to instruct her son in Newtonian physics. At this time, she found a new tutor, Samuel König, who introduced her to the metaphysics of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, largely unknown in France. Leibniz’s notions of the principle of sufficient reason and the vis viva (living force) appealed to du Châtelet. At the same time, she approved of René Descartes’s attempt to unite his metaphysics with the physics of his mechanical philosophy, though she did not accept the particulars of his philosophy, especially his reliance on God as the first cause. Critical of revealed religion, she replaced Descartes’s God with Leibniz’s principle of sufficient reason in the metaphysical aspect of the work and substituted Descartes’s physics, including the vortices and theory of motion, with Newtonian mechanics and Leibnizian dynamics.

In 1745, du Châtelet began her translation of the third edition of Sir Isaac Newton’s Philosophiae naturalis principia mathematica (1687; The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, 1729; best known as the Principia), a project in which she was engaged until the end of her life. She consulted both the first and second editions of the work and Newton’s own commentaries and abridgment, as well as a number of commentaries and specialized mathematical treatises written by French and Swiss mathematicians. In the notes to the translation, she defended her choice of words and revealed a familiarity with possible solutions.

Included in du Châtelet’s translation was an “Exposition abrégée” (abridged exposition), which provided three ways to understand Newton’s physics. In the first, she provided the reader with a clear understanding of the basic ideas and the logic behind Newton’s physics, avoiding the technical language of science and mathematics. The second explication presented algebraic equivalents of Newton’s demonstrations and included du Châtelet’s solutions of some problems through calculus. Finally, she synthesized the progress made in physics since Newton’s death. The result of four years of work, Principes mathematiques de la philosophie naturelle (1759; mathematical principles of natural philosophy) was published first in an incomplete form in 1756.

By 1748, the relationship between Voltaire and du Châtelet had become quite strained. They went to Lunéville, the court of King Stanisław I Leszczyński. There, du Châtelet met Jean François, marquis de Saint-Lambert, a man ten years younger than she. She became pregnant by him and died on September 10, 1749, a few days after giving birth to a daughter.

Significance

The marquise du Châtelet’s translation is still the only French translation of Newton’s Principia. Publication of the complete version in 1759 was eagerly awaited and was instrumental in providing the French with an understanding of Newtonian physics. Du Châtelet’s name was included in a list of important Newtonians in the 1779 edition of the Encyclopédie: Ou, Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts, et des métiers (1751-1772; Encyclopedia, 1965). However, the acceptance of Newtonianism was not complete in France until the end of the eighteenth century.

It is significant that du Châtelet’s male contemporaries accepted her as their intellectual equal. However, modern scholars have examined her life in the context of the restrictions imposed on women by society. She herself decried the lack of educational opportunities for women. Most of her important friends were men, and it was only through her association with them that she was able to attain prominence. On the other hand, her marginalization from the professional mainstream allowed her to carve out an original philosophical position, as expressed in the Institutions de physique.

Bibliography

Harth, Erica. Cartesian Women: Versions and Subversions of Rational Discourse in the Old Regime. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1992. Discusses the efforts of intellectual women who, excluded from participation in the new learning by the founding of the Academy of Sciences in 1666, circumvented and challenged the dominant discourse. Includes a discussion of du Châtelet’s reactions to Descartes’s thought and her own ideas on physics.

Hutton, Sarah. “Émilie du Châtelet’s ’Institutions de physique’ as a Document in the History of French Newtonianism.” Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science 35, no. 3 (September, 2004): 515-531. Examines the development of du Châtelet’s Newtonianism from 1738 to 1742 and her view that Leibniz’s metaphysics was compatible with Newton’s physics.

Wade, Ira O. Voltaire and Madame du Châtelet: An Essay on the Intellectual Activity at Cirey. Reprint. New York: Octagon Books, 1967. Exhaustive study focused on du Châtelet’s critique of Genesis and its influence on Voltaire.

Zinsser, Judith P. “Émilie du Châtelet: Genius, Gender, and Intellectual Authority.” In Women Writers and the Early Modern British Political Tradition, edited by Hilda L. Smith. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998. A discussion of difficulties faced by du Châtelet as a result of the exclusion of women from the learned academies.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. “Entrepreneur of the ’Republic of Letters’: Émilie de Bretenil, Marquise du Châtelet, and Bernard Mandeville’s Fable of the Bees.” French Historical Studies 25 (Fall, 2002): 595-624. Discussion of du Châtelet as a philosophe and as an intermediary between French and English culture.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. “Translating Newton’s Principia: The Marquise du Châtelet’s Revisions and Additions for a French Audience.” Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London 55, no. 2 (May, 2001): 227-245. An evaluation of the scope of du Châtelet’s efforts to translate and explain Newton’s great work on physics.