Pierre Varignon's Nouvelles Conjectures and the French Response to Newton's Universal Theory of Gravity
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Date
2023-05
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The Ohio State University
Abstract
In 1690, French natural philosopher Pierre Varignon published his first treatise on gravity, Nouvelles conjectures sur la pesanteur. The Cartesian tract, wherein gravity is caused by the fluidity of air and orbits are due to vortices, written by an educated scientist who almost certainly read Newton's Principia published three years earlier, epitomizes the French scientific community's reaction to Newton at the time. The fact that this treatise is mostly forgotten in the history of Varignon's work as he took a more analytical approach to Newton's work represents the rapidly changing ways that French mathematicians dealt with Newton in the decades following the universal theory of gravity.
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Keywords
gravity, empiricist, rationalist, epistemology, scientific revolution