The man who flattened the earth : Maupertuis and the sciences in the enlightenment
Self-styled adventurer, literary wit, and statesman of science, Pierre-Louis Moreau de Maupertuis stood at the center of Enlightenment science and culture. This work offers a portrait of this man, revealing how his private life and public works made him a man of science in eighteenth-century Europe.
Biography
ix, 408 pages : illustrations, maps ; 24 cm
9780226793603, 9780226793610, 0226793605, 0226793613
49719072
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