Heroic narratives of quest and discocvery

Configurations

Volumn 6, Issue 2, 1998, Pages 223-242

  Terrali, Mary ^a  

^a HARVARD UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 0001759914     PISSN: 10631801     EISSN: 10806520     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/con.1998.0019     Document Type: Article

References (51)

1. E.g., jean Le Rond d'Alembert, Preliminary Discourse to the Encyclopedia (1751);
2. M.-J.A.-N. Caritat de Condorcet, Sketch for a Historical Picture of the Progress of the Human Mind (1793).
3. Jean Le Rond d'Alembert, Discours préliminaire de l'Encyclopédie (Paris: Gonthier, 1965), p. 89. (Ali translations are mine unless otherwise noted.)
4. Discours Préliminaire de L'Encyclopédie Ibid., pp. 105-106.
5. On this paradox, see Dorinda Outram, The Enlightenment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).
6. R. Hooykaas, "The Rise of Modern Science: When and Why?" British Journal for the History of Science 20 (1987): 453-473.
7. Francis Bacon, The Novtnn Organon, Aphorism 84, in Tlie Works of Francis Bacon, ed. James Spedding, Robert Leslie Ellis, and Douglas Denon Heath, vol. 1 (London: Longmans, 1857), p. 191.
8. On the character of the explorer in the eighteenth century, see Marie-Noëlle Bourguet, "The Explorer," in Enlightenment Portraits, ed. M. Vovelle (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), pp. 257-315.
9. Mary Terrall, "Representing the Earth's Shape: The Polemics Surrounding Maupertuis's Expedition to Lapland," Isis 83 (1992): 218-237.
10. For the Cassini map, see Josef Konvitz, Cartography in France, 1680-1848: Science, Engineering, and Statecraft (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987).
11. Newton and Huygens, each using his own theory of gravity, based their calculations on observations of the slowing of the seconds pendulum at the equator, made by Jean Richer in 1672. Jacques Cassini derived his elongated sphere from geodetic measurements along the meridian running through Paris. See John Greenberg, The Problem of the Earth's Shape from Newton to Clairaut (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).
12. P.-L. M. de Maupertuis, "Discours qui a été lu dans l'Assemblée publique ... le 13 novembre 1737," in idem, La figure de la terre, déterminée par les observations de Mssrs. de Maupertuis, Clairaut, Camus, Le Monnier.... faites par ordre du roy au cercle polaire (Paris, 1738), p. 6.
13. Charles-Marie de La Condamine, "Relation abrégée d'un voyage fait dans l'intérieur de l'Amérique méridionale . . . ," Mémoires de l'Académie Royale des Sciences, 1745, p. 392.
14. Bernard de Fontenelle, "Discours prononcé àl'Académie des Sciences, dans l'assemblée publique d'après Pâques 1735, sur le voyage de quelques académiciens au Pérou," in idem. Oeuvres complètes, vol. 1 (Paris, 1818), pp. 29-30.
15. Bernard de Fontenelle, "Sur la figure de la terre," Histoire de l'Académie Royale des Sciences, 1735, pp. 47-48.
16. Voltaire to Maupertuis, May 22,1738, in Oeuvres complètes de Voltaire, éd. T. Besterman et al., vol. 89 (Geneva,' 1969), p. 131.
17. Voltaire used the Argonaut image again ("Argonautes nouveaux") in his Discours en vers sur l'homme, 1738.
18. Jason indeed would not have ended up with the golden fleece if it had not been for Medea.
19. Few of the letters written from Lapland survive. For an interesting example, see "Lettre de Maupertuis àMme. de Vertillac," [April] 1737, in Mélanges Publiées par la Société des Bibliophiles Français 6 (1829): 1-10.
20. Maupertuis, "Discours" (above, n. 11).
21. Discours Ibid., pp. 51-52.
22. Bernard de Fontenelle, "Sur la figure de la terre," Histoire de l'Académie Royale des Sciences, 1737, p. 91.
23. Voltaire to Maupertuis, May 22,1738 (above, n. 15), p. 131.
24. For the link between novels and female readers, see Joan DeJean, Tender Geographies: Women and the Origins of the Novel in France (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991
25. ); idem, Ancients against Moderns: Culture Wars and the Making of a Fin de Siècle (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997).
26. La Condamine, "Relation abrégée d'un voyage" (above, n. 12), p. 393.
27. Pierre Bouguer, "Relation abrégée du voyage fait au Pérou par Mssrs. de l'Académie Royale des Sciences, pour mesurer les degrés du Méridien aux environs de l'Equateur, & en conclure la figure de la terre," in idem, La figure de la tene (Paris, 1749), p. v. Part of this text was read to a public session of the Academy in November 1744.
28. M.-J.-A.-N. Caritat de Condorcet, "Éloge de La Condamine," Histoire de l'Académie Royale des Sciences, 1774, p. 93.
29. Histoire de L'Académie Royale des Sciences Ibid., p. 104.
30. Histoire de L'Académie Royale des Sciences Ibid., pp. 92-93.
31. Jean-Sylvain Bailly, Histoire de l'astronomie moderne, vol. 3 (Paris, 1782), p. 12.
32. Histoire de L'astronomie Moderne Ibid., p. 13.
33. J. F. Montucla, Histoire des mathématiques (completed and published by Jerome Lalande), vol. 4 (Paris: Henri Agasse, 1802), p. 150.
34. Histoire des Mathématiques Ibid., p. 152.
35. John Olmsted, "The Scientific Expedition of Jean Richer to Cayenne (1672-1673)," Isis 34 (1942): 117-128.
36. Jean Richer, "Observations astronomiques et physiques faites en l'isle de Caïenne" (1679), Mémoires de l'Académie Royale des Sciences, 1666-1699, vol. 7, pt. 1 (Paris, 1729).
37. J.-D. Cassini, "Les élémens de l'astronomie vérifiés par M. Cassini par le rapport de ses tables aux observations de M. Richer faites en l'isle de Caïenne" (1684), Mémoires de l'Académie Royale des Sciences, 1666-1699, vol. 8 (Paris, 1730), p. 96.
38. J.-S. Bailly, Histoire de l'astronomie moderne, vol. 2 (Paris, 1779), p. 366.
39. Maupertuis to Mme. de Vertillac (above, n. 17), p. 9. The local inhabitants with whom the men of science fraternized were Swedish colonials, and not the indigenous Sami ("Lapp"); these latter appear in the accounts, but not as dinner companions or mistresses. For the gossip in Paris, see Emilie du Châtelet to Maupertuis, December 1, 1736, in Les lettres de la Marquise du Châtelet, vol. 1, éd. T. Besterman (Geneva, 1958), p. 125.
40. Thèse items are listed in the invoice prepared for outfitting the ship sailing from Dunkirk to Stockholm on the initial leg of the expedition. "État de la dépense faite en achat de vivres ...," cited in C. Nordmann, "L'expédition de Maupertuis et Celsius en Laponie," Cahiers d'Histoire Mondiale 10 (1966): 84.
41. The Abbé Outhier had considerable experience with surveying and mapping techniques, had worked with Jacques Cassini at the Paris Observatory, and was a correspondent of the Academy of Sciences.
42. Reginald Outhier, tournai d'un voyage au nord en 1736 et 1737 (Paris, 1744), "Pré face," n.p.
43. M.-J.-A.-N. Caritat de Condorcet, Sketch for a Historical Picture of the Progress of the Human Mind (1793), in idem,
44. Selected Writings, ed. Keith Baker (Indianapolis: BobbsMerrill, 1976), p. 239.
45. See Carolyn Merchant, Tlie Death of Nature: Women, Ecology, and the Scientific Revolution (New York: Harper and Row, 1980);
46. Brian Easlea, Witch-Hunting, Magic and the New Philosophy: An Introduction to Debates of the Scientific Revolution, 1470-1750 (Brighton: Harvester Press, 1980);
47. Evelyn Fox Keller, Reflections on Gender and Science (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1985). Keller's book belongs with the others by virtue of her perceptive essays on Bacon; she does not make a case for a grand narrative so much as hint at the possibility of such an interpretation,
48. For example, Easlea equates mechanism with rationalism and a denial of body and sexuality, so that the control of nature has to be rational rather than physical: Easlea, Witch-Hunting, pp. 141-142.
49. Bailly, Histoire (above, n. 28), p. 2.
50. Montucla, Histoire (above, n. 30), p. 152.
51. Histoire Ibid., p. 157.