Answer one of the following questions:
- How did Jean d’Alembert in the “Preliminary Discourse” of the Encyclopédieportray Isaac Newton and his work (cf. pp 80-3)? How does d’Alembert’s description compare to Newton’s portrayal of his own work in the Principiaand Opticks?
[NOTE: You may also answer this question with the focus on Francis Bacon or René Descartes by comparing d’Alembert’s description with the texts we read from Bacon (“Description of a Natural and Experimental History”) or Descartes (Discourse on Method) in Unit 2.]
- In ways does Émilie du Châtelet in her Foundations of Physicssupport and, also, critique Newton and Newtonian natural philosophy? Can she be considered a Newtonian?
- In what ways can Benjamin Franklin’s book, Experiments and Observations on Electricity, be considered a good example of Newtonian philosophy?
- How and why do Joseph Priestley and Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier disagree regarding the nature of “dephlogisticated air” or “pure air” – the gas that Lavoisier will eventually call, “oxygen”? Please use evidence from Priestley’sExperiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Airand Lavoisier’s “Memoir on Combustion in General.”
- In whay ways is Antoine Lavoisier’s discussion of “elements” in his Treatise on the Elements of Chemistry(preface, pp. xxiv-xxvi) similar to and different from that of Herman Boerhaave on the same topic in the latter’s Elements of Chemistry(pp. 46-7)? What can this comparison tell us about the nature of the “Chemical Revolution”?
