Anti-Newtonians on the Continent in the Late Eighteenth Century: an Alternative Scientific Practice? (original) (raw)

Historiography has considered that acceptance of newtonianism in France achieved in the mid-1730s with the end of the debate over the Earth shape. However, over the whole century, some scientists still defended mechanism against the idea of an action-at-a-distance. The most famous is George-Louis Lesage (1724-1803), from Geneva, because he intended to demonstrate the attraction law with a physical principle. But the ones who rejected completely the Newtonian theory are less known. First among them, Joseph-Etienne Bertier (1702-1783), Academy of Sciences correspondent from 1748 on, published in 1763 and 1764 some Principes de physique, pour servir de suite aux principes mathématiques de Newton. Others, like David, La Perrière, or Vivens, were members of provincial academies. They all wrote “Essais” or “Systèmes” to refute Newton. My presentation will focus on two main points. 1.What are the arguments used by anti-Newtonians? The latter deliberately matched mathematics with physics. To explain how the world goes, they distrusted calculus techniques as unsuitable to study the very nature of matter and movement. Such an attitude required an alternative epistemology to the Newtonian one. 2.How are these arguments conveyed? After 1740, academic prizes for astronomy dealt only with typical Newtonian questions, e.g. the three-bodies problem. To get an audience, anti-Newtonians submitted their research work and criticisms to periodicals such as the Journal Encyclopédique, the Journal de Trévoux, or the Mercure de France. These journals represented an alternative place to publicize scientific ideas dismissed by the institution.