Dr. Pedro Pricladnitzky

Keynote Title: Grammar as an Object of Scientific Inquiry

Abstract: This presentation examines Émilie Du Châtelet’s Grammaire Raisonnée, an unpublished manuscript that has received little attention within her corpus. The extant chapters reveal that Du Châtelet conceives grammar not as a merely conventional system but as an object of scientific inquiry. Her approach grounds the grammar of substantives in a generalization from the metaphysics of substance and her theory of hypothesis, thereby linking linguistic structures to philosophical principles. The talk will emphasize the implications of her grammatical reflections for understanding the logical-ontological foundations of language in her thought.

CV: Pedro Pricladnitzky is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile. He was a researcher at the Center for the History of Women Philosophers and Scientists, working on the critical edition of Émilie Du Châtelet’s Institutions de Physique manuscript. His research interests focus on the relationship between metaphysics and natural philosophy in the early modern period, with publications on Descartes, Cavendish, Du Châtelet, among others.