“According to my opinion your book is full of the most interesting things in physics and metaphysics,
and there would be much to be gained by those who undertake the study of philosophy, by making it familiar.
But I fear that this will be difficult for beginners and especially for the people of the world.”
(Clairaut to Du Châtelet in a letter from January 4, 1741).
This project aims to present an online Reading Guide to help students, teachers and researchers navigate through Du Châtelet’s Foundations of Physics, or Institutions de physique (1740/42) and to make this important text visible to a broad audience.
Further information on Émilie Du Châtelet can be found here.
Full text scans of the different published versions of the Foundations of Physics can be accessed by clicking on the images below:
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Reading Guide
Contents
- Preface
- Chapter 1. Of the Principles of Our Knowledge
- Chapter 2. Of the Existence of God
- Chapter 3. Of Essence, Attributes and Modes
- Chapter 4. Of Hypotheses
- Chapter 5. Of Space
- Chapter 6. Of Time
- Chapter 7. Of the Elements of Matter
- Chapter 8. Of the Nature of Bodies
- Chapter 9. Of the Divisibility of Matter
- Chapter 10. Of the Shape and Porosity of Bodies
- Chapter 11. Of Motion and Rest in General; and of Simple Motion
- Chapter 12. Of Composite Motion
- Chapter 13. Of Heaviness
- Chapter 14. Of the Phenomenon of Heaviness, Continued
- Chapter 15. Of Mr. Newton’s Discoveries of Heaviness
- Chapter 16. Of Newtonian Attraction
- Chapter 17. Of Rest, and the Fall of Bodies on an Inclined Plane
- Chapter 18. Of the Oscillation of Pendulums
- Chapter 19. Of the Movement of Projectiles
- Chapter 20. Of Dead Forces, or Pressing Forces, and the Equilibrium of Forces
- Chapter 21. Of the Force of Bodies
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