Resumen de Rohault's Traite de Physique and its newtonian reception
Jacques Rohault (1618-1672) was one of the most important Cartesians in seventeenth-century France. He became famous in Paris, during the 1660s, when he hosted some very popular public conferences. Unlike his contemporary Cartesian fellows, Rohault was well concerned with the problem of experiment and he designed a number of instruments, which were used in his observations. The results of his experimental research were printed in the Traité de physique (1671), which was quickly translated into Latin and published in Geneva, Amsterdam, London, and Louvain among other places.
In this paper, I shall propose a new reading for the problem of the reception of Rohault’s textbook in England.
Translated and annotated by the celebrated Newtonian, Samuel Clarke, this book represents a combination of Cartesianism and Newtonianism. While Descartes’ influence upon Newton’s philosophy has been discussed by various scholars, the relation between Cartesianism and Newtonianism is still a topic in need of further exploration for the historians of science. Clarke’s various editions of Rohault’s Traité provide a good example of the diffusion of Cartesianism at the end of the seventeenth century, making an interesting case study for the dialogue between two competing paradigms during the “scientific revolution” and the transformation of natural philosophy into physics.
