Émilie Du Châtelet on Newtonianism and Hypotheses in the Eighteenth Century
Émilie Du Châtelet produced one of the first fully articulated accounts of the role of hypothesis in science, problematizing the debate in mid-eighteenth-century France over the roles of hypotheses, experimentation, and speculation in scientific methodology. This chapter examines her original views on the general topic of hypotheses by examining her extended attack throughout her Institutions de physique against the specific hypothesis regarding the cause of gravity held by Newtonians John Keill (1671–1721) and John Freind (1675–1728). In light of Du Châtelet’s criticism of the Keill-Freind hypothesis, we can interpret her as a clarifier of Newton (as per recent interpretations) who believes that hypothesizing about the cause of gravity, for example, can aid in that clarification, but who also believes in strict constraints placed upon the role of hypotheses in science.