The man who flattened the earth [electronic resource] : Maupertuis and the sciences in the enlightenment / Mary Terrall.
Material type: TextPublication details: Chicago : University of Chicago Press, c2002.Description: 1 online resource (ix, 408 p.) : ill., mapsISBN:- 9780226793627 (electronic bk.)
- 0226793621 (electronic bk.)
- 509.2 22
- Q143.M28 T47 2002eb
- 2003 A-578
- Q 143.M28
Item type | Current library | Call number | URL | Status | Date due | Barcode | |
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ელ.რესურსი | ეროვნული სამეცნიერო ბიბლიოთეკა 1 | Link to resource | Available |
Includes bibliographical references (p. 371-392) and index.
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.
Self-styled adventurer, literary wit, philosopher, and statesman of science, Pierre-Louis Moreau de Maupertuis (1698-1759) stood at the center of Enlightenment science and culture. Offering an elegant and accessible portrait of this remarkable man, Mary Terrall uses the story of Maupertuis's life, self-fashioning, and scientific works to explore what it meant to do science and to be a man of science in eighteenth-century Europe. Beginning his scientific career as a mathematician in Paris, Maupertuis entered the public eye with a much-discussed expedition to Lapland, which confirmed Newton's ca.
Description based on print version record.
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