The Man Who Flattened the Earth

Maupertuis and the Sciences in the Enlightenment

Mary Terrall

408 pages, parution le 12/07/2006

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Résumé

Winner of the 2003 Pfizer Prize of the History of Science Society and the 2004 Gottshalk Prize of the American Society for Eighteen-Century Studies

Pierre-Louis Moreau de Maupertuis (1698-1759) stood at the center of Enlightenment science and culture. In The Man Who flattened the Earth, Mary Terrall offers an elegant portrait of this remarkable man, and uses his biography to explore what it meant to be a man of science in eighteenth-century Europe. A well-established mathematician when he caught the public eye with a much-discussed geodetic expedition to Lapland, Maupertuis went on to make significant and controversial contributions to physics, life science, astronomy and metaphysics. Equally at home in cafés and royal courts. Maupertuis used his social connections and his publications to enhance a carefully constructed reputation as a man of letters and a man of science. The Man Who Flattened the Earth also delves into larger Enlightenment issues, including the development of scientific institutions, the impact of print culture on science, and the interactions of science and government.

L'auteur - Mary Terrall

Mary Terrall is associate professor of history at the University of California, Los Angeles

Sommaire

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
List of Abbreviations
A Note on Translations
Portrait of a Man of Science
From Saint-Malo to Paris
Mathematics and Mechanics in the Paris Academy of Sciences
The Expedition to Lapland
The Polemical Aftermath of the Lapland Expedition
Beyond Newton and on to Berlin
Toward a Science of Living Things
The Berlin Academy of Sciences
Teleology, Cosmology, and Least Action
Heredity and Materialism
The Final Years
Bibliography
Index

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Caractéristiques techniques

	PAPIER
Éditeur(s)	The University of Chicago Press
Auteur(s)	Mary Terrall
Parution	12/07/2006
Nb. de pages	408
Format	15,5 x 23
Couverture	Broché
Poids	566g
Intérieur	Noir et Blanc
EAN13	9780226793610
ISBN13	978-0-226-79361-0