By 1740, the Newton wars in France were in full swing. Voltaire was at the center of the struggle, and one theater of combat was the campaign, waged by him and the Marquise du Châtelet, to respond to his critics while stabilizing his public perception as a philosophe. However, du Châtelet's agendas did not always conform with Voltaire's, especially as she began to chart her own philosophical career. Against each as well stood a host of different opponents. These included Cartesians inside and outside the Paris Academy, and journalists who saw in these battles anything but a serious scientific...

By 1740, the Newton wars in France were in full swing. Voltaire was at the center of the struggle, and one theater of combat was the campaign, waged by him and the Marquise du Châtelet, to respond to his critics while stabilizing his public perception as a philosophe. However, du Châtelet's agendas did not always conform with Voltaire's, especially as she began to chart her own philosophical career. Against each as well stood a host of different opponents. These included Cartesians inside and outside the Paris Academy, and journalists who saw in these battles anything but a serious scientific debate. Another Newtonian academician, Georges-Louis Le Clerc, the future Comte de Buffon, published his translation of Vegetable staticks, or An account of some statical experiments on the sap of plants, a thoroughgoing illustration of Newtonian experimental philosophy. This chapter also looks at Pierre-Louis Moreau de Maupertuis and his public radicalism, the relationship between Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and Leibnizianism in eighteenth-century France, and the solidification of Enlightenment Newtonianism after 1745.