Émilie du Châtelet’s Institutions de Physique: a Leibnizian-Newtonian Synthesis? A methodological approach

Abstract This paper seeks to show how historiographical categories that place philosophies within schools of thought entail accepting a high theoretical cost: the category circumscribes a general framework for interpretation, but at the same time conceals what makes a particular thought unique and sometimes original. If they are only Leibnizian or Newtonian, why give them a place in the corpus? In order to establish the limits and challenges of this categorisation, this paper coins the category of ‘Leibnizo-Newtonianism’, not in order to identify a paradoxical school of thought, but rather to question this reading of the history of philosophy. On the other hand, it proposes to use the analysis of epistemological practices (the relationship between hypothesis and experience, the status of principle etc.) to identify the problem Émilie du Châtelet set out to answer: how can one establish the certainty of our knowledge of nature?