De l’essence, des attributs, et des modes

Chapter 3 of the Paris Manuscript of the Institutions de Physique is now online! You can read it on our webpage here.

This is another complex chapter, with four handwritten revision stages.

One especially striking feature is that the first version (transcribed as version A) breaks off just when Du Châtelet begins to write about a famous dispute over the possibility of God’s superadding thought to matter. This is filled in in the next version, but undergoes significant revisions in the later handwritten version D, apparently changing her stance somewhat with respect to advocates of the possibility of superaddition. Further significant changes appear between the 1740 and 1742 printed editions of the Institutions, which are here transcribed as texts F and G.