Tradução do Texto “Réflexions et Eclaircissemens sur les Nouvelles Vibrations des Cordes Exposées dans les Mémoires de L’Académie de 1747 & 1748”, de Daniel Bernoulli

Este artigo apresenta uma tradução do texto Réflexions et Eclaircissemens sur les Nouvelles Vibrations des Cordes Exposées dans les Mémoires de l’Académie de 1747 & 1748 do estudioso Daniel Bernoulli (1700–1782), publicado nas Mémoires de l’Académie Royale des Sciences et Belles-Lettres em Berlim. Este texto fora escrito em resposta às memórias De vibratione chordarum exercitatio (1748) de Leonhard Euler (1707–1783) e Recherches sur la courbe que forme une corde tendue, mise en vibration (1747), de Jean le Rond d’Alembert (1717–1783), trabalhos que também foram publicados nas Mémoires da academia mencionada. Em contrapartida ao tratamento matemático apresentado por Euler e d’Alembert, Bernoulli procura construir uma justificativa para a percepção dos sons ouvidos simultaneamente ao som principal de uma corda vibrante, por meio da sobreposição dos modos de vibração de uma corda qualquer, dando continuidade a uma acirrada disputa sobre a questão. Em tal abordagem, é fundamental ressaltar que Bernoulli mantém continuamente um sentido físico para as teorizações dos sons simultâneos por ele estabelecidos e inferências delas decorrentes.

Lecturas españolas de D'Alembert

Jean Le Rond d'Alembert era un personaje bien conocido de los ilustrados españoles como testimonian los repertorios de sus bibliotecas. No se puede presumir de erudición en la España continental o en las diferentes colonias de la Nueva España si no se poseen uno o varios volúmenes de sus "Mélanges" (1.ª edición en cuatro tomos en 1759, y 1.ª edición del tomo 5 en 1767). Pero sobre todo se le celebra, o se le condena, como matemático y como codirector de l'"Encyclopédie". Su "Système figuré des connaissances humaines" vuelve imprescindible el "Discours préliminaire", y erige a su autor, en el campo de los progresistas, en cartógrafo de los campos del saber y en fundador del saber moderno por fin liberado de la metafísica.

Leonhardi Euleri Opera Omnia IVA/7: Commercium Epistolicum (Euler – French speaking scientists from Switzerland). Editors: S. Bodenmann, V. Hug, M. Ilić, A. Kleinert. Basel: Birkhäuser, 2017, XII+621 pages – A volume overview

We give an overview of the seventh volume of series IVA of the Birkhäuser edition of Leonhard Euler’s complete works and correspondence. This volume contains Euler’s correspondence in French with ten of his Swiss countrymen: Louis Bertrand, Charles Bonnet, Marc-Michel Bousquet, Jean de Castillon, Gabriel Cramer, Philibert Cramer, Gaspard Cuentz, Albrecht von Haller, Georges-Louis Lesage and Johan Caspar Wettstein. A letter of the German Johann Michael von Loën to Euler, mentioned in the Euler-Bertrand letter exchange is also included as well as the recently rediscovered first letter of Euler to Jean le Rond d’Alembert in supplement. The letters cover a large range of topics also outside Euler’s mathematical and physical interests giving a new insight into his non-scientific activities, and thus casting also a new light on this great scientist as a person.

Les Lumières âprement disputées en Allemagne de l’Est (RDA). Le cas édifiant de D’Alembert

Résumé La réception des Lumières en République démocratique allemande (RDA) était particulière. D’une part, la tradition marxiste a découvert la pensée matérialiste dans l’histoire des idées allemande et a reproché à juste titre à la « bourgeoisie idéaliste » de l’avoir marginalisée. D’autre part, l’usage dogmatique de l’ouvrage de Lénine concernant l’épistémologie de Ernst Mach, Matérialisme et empiriocriticisme, empêcha d’apprécier convenablement des penseurs importants comme Jean Le Rond D’Alembert. De plus, la structure répressive de la vie académique en RDA a paralysé la renaissance de la pensée matérialiste. Au lieu de se consacrer aux conditions concrètes de la production du savoir, la pensée matérialiste était entravée par l’obligation de recourir à l’interprétation économique.

Musketeers and Jesuits: The French Birth of Esprit de Corps in the Eighteenth Century

In this chapter, the birth of the phrase is evidenced in Montesquieu as well as in military discourse, several decades before what is generally admitted by dictionaries. In the eighteenth century, the notion of esprit de corps developed into a fierce critical weapon, a combat concept bred by social philosophers. Firstly targeting religious groups, chief among them the Jesuits, it would later, in the name of national interest, point at social groups perceived as privileged and biased. The polemical and political notion of esprit de corps blossomed in the first volumes of the Encyclopédie of Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d’Alembert, in three different articles published between 1751 and 1755, which are here analysed. The author also shows how early uses of the phrase suggest that attempts to conceive a national esprit de corps without intermediary bodies or mediating communities might be flawed by a scale error.

Jean-Philippe Rameau’s Influence on Harmonic Theory in Spain

It is well known that the music-theoretical ideas of Jean-Philippe Rameau (1683–1764) were disseminated throughout much of Europe in large part by the summary editions issued by the mathematician and philosopher Jean Le Rond d’Alembert (1717–83) and certain German, English, and Italian translations that followed. Little is known, however, about how Rameau’s revolutionary and controversial theories appeared in Spain, and even less about how they were received and interpreted. In response, we offer a contextual analysis of the effects that these ideas had on both forward-looking intellectuals as well as on conservative professional musicians grounded in music of the past.

The University of Southern California Voltaire Letters: A polymathic multimodal digital project

In spring 2015 one catalog record in the University of Southern California (USC) Special Collections came to my attention: Voltaire correspondence, 1741–1777. The correspondence consists of 30 original autograph letters and four poems authored by Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet, 1694–1778) and his circle, including leading figures of the Enlightenment such as Jean le Rond d’Alembert (1717–1783), Frederick II of Prussia (1712–1786), and Madame de Pompadour (1721–1764)—the acknowledged mistress of Louis XV (1710–1774).

FREDERICK THE GREAT AND JEAN LE ROND D'ALEMBERT ON PHILOSOPHY, TRUTH, AND POLITICS

The prize question of the Berlin Academy of Sciences for 1780, on the utility of deception, has attracted both controversy and scholarly interest. Yet very little attention has been dedicated to the question's peculiar beginnings in the correspondence between the philosopher and mathematician Jean Le Rond d'Alembert and Frederick the Great, king of Prussia, in a discussion concerning the expulsion of the Jesuits from France. This correspondence not only reveals the prize question's complex genealogy in long-standing debates on the true ends of philosophy, but also helps revise conventional frameworks for understanding the relationship between philosophy and politics in Enlightenment Europe. Far from an adornment intended to boost the ‘Enlightened’ credentials of an absolutist king, d'Alembert held the momentum in this relationship, and recruited Frederick to his own campaign of promoting publicly useful philosophy. ‘Philosophy’ here amounted to a commitment to the truth and its public defence, rather than subscription to or belief in a specific set of ideas or political reforms. Placing pressure on rulers to disavow deceitful politics, the far-reaching implications of this conception of philosophy for political life were no less ambitious than the agendas espoused by protagonists of a supposed ‘radical Enlightenment’.