Selected Philosophical and Scientific Writings by Emilie Du Châtelet (review)

Book Reviews1 73 perspective of plenitude and continuity enables us to integrate Kristeva's and Foucault's work to a larger spatial theory ofinclusion. The book aims to make more concrete the abstract spatial theory of the three French thinkers of the twentieth century by offering not only a theoretical perspective of space but also its applications into literary texts. Zoe PetropoulouSt. John's University TRANSLATIONS Du Châtelet, Emilie. Selected Philosophical and Scientific Writings. Ed. & intro. Judith P. Zinsser; trans. Isabelle Bour & Judith P. Zinsser. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009. Pp. [i]-xxviii, 424. ISBN 0-226-16806-9 (cloth). ISBN 0-226-16807-7 (paper). A brilliant scientific mind with prodigious critical and mathematical gifts, Emilie Du Châtelet is frequently identified simply as Voltaire's lover. However, Du Châtelet's own intellectual endeavors merit far greater attention, and the current volume proposes to address that need. Offering a sample of Du Châtelet's writings on physics, as well as philosophical texts, commentaries on works she translated, "examinations" of the Bible, and many samples of her correspondence, the editor and translators of Selected Philosophical and Scientific Writings aim to give voice to this remarkable woman, offering readers of English the opportunity to appreciate some of her work in that language for the first time. The volume is divided into six texts, beginning with Du Châtelet's preface to her translation of Bernard Mandeville's The Fable of the Bees. Calling Mandeville's work "the best book of ethics ever written," Du Châtelet uses her preface to offer her own philosophy of translation, but also to comment upon general opinions of the work of women as translators, as well as on the education of women and their ability to share in "the rights of the mind" (49). Du Châtelet will stress the importance of formal study in future texts as well; examples in this edition include her preface to the Foundations of Physics as well as her Discourse on Happiness. The second, third, and fifth texts ofthe volume all focus upon Du Châtelet's desire to explore the physical world; the texts in question are her Dissertation on the Nature and Propagation ofFire, Foundations ofPhysics, and Commentary on Newton 's Principia. Demonstrating a broad knowledge of foundational texts in natural philosophy, from Pythagorus to Newton by way ofPtolemy, Aristotle, Copernicus, Tycho Brahe, Kepler, Hooke, Galileo and more, Du Châtelet is able to bring her own hypotheses and experiments to bear upon the writings of others, even as her primary goal is to explicate others' work. Indeed, her texts offer a substantial review of the scientific literature of her time, and any scholar interested in an eighteenth-century understanding of topics such as time, fire, 174Women in French Studies and the elements of matter, to name but a subset of the material covered here, will find this volume invaluable. Another significant portion of the current edition presents Du Châtelet's ideas on the existence of God as well as her highly critical (and, for most of its history, clandestine) Examinations of the Bible, in which Du Châtelet categorically rejects the God of the Old Testament as implausible, and the divinity and prophesied origins of Jesus as untenable. Nevertheless, the goal of the study ofnature, according to Du Châtelet, is precisely to discover "some part of the intentions and the art of the Creator in the construction of this universe" (144). Hence, Du Châtelet does not rule out a divine origin for the world; she merely judges as reprehensible organized religion's efforts to describe this origin in a text without scientific rigor. The final text in the volume, Discourse on Happiness, represents Du Châtelet's contribution to a form already well in vogue at the time. The text gives voice to a very practical view of happiness: Du Châtelet suggests her readers focus on virtue, contentment, health, a fine cultivation of illusion, and, most importantly, love, in their pursuit of a happy life. As the editor points out, Du Châtelet's approach is somewhat different from that of her male predecessors, however, as she incorporates personal...