Frederick the Great discussion post 9

[cahn]

...I leave you guys alone for one weekend and it's time for a new Fritz post, lol!

I'm gonna reply to the previous post comments but I guess new letter-reading, etc. should go in this one :)

Frederick the Great links

Comments

Re: Émilie du Châtelet: Daring Genius of the Enlightenment (Judith P. Zinsser) - general thoughts

[mildred_of_midgard]

Eeeeee! I don't know whether I'm more excited because it's a writeup about my fave Émilie, or because it's a write-up by you! Supplemented with details that weren't in the book that you already knew!

Look how far you've come. :D :D :D

I got the impression that Zinsser is a rather more careful writer and historian than, oh, Bodanis.

That wouldn't be hard. ;)

She is very careful to distinguish between things that she is taking from primary sources (mostly letters) and things she is totally making up from circumstantial evidence

See, Bodanis *says* everything is taken from a primary source, but one, he's not that great about signaling which primary source for a given fact, and two, his biases in his interpretation of the facts can be spotted a mile away and are not encouraging. Voltaire is a god! Émilie is a god! Fritz is a demon! (I guess it's a nice antidote to Hamilton, Preuss, 1926!Editor, and their ilk, but still!)

At one point she mentions that noblewomen had so much fancy clothing on that they often just... did their elimination where they stood, instead of trying to maneuver over a chamber pot, and servants cleaned it up. Is this true?? And if so, how is it that everyone in fandom doesn't know this??

I mean, that's is what I've always heard, albeit not from primary sources. I recommend you check out this write-up on history in fiction, which may be of great interest to you for more than just that tidbit. Selenak, i'd be fascinated to hear your take on that essay. And also on 18C hygiene practices, or lack thereof!

Also, thank you, Wayback Machine, for preserving the images in that post, which are highly relevant and now broken.

 one page talking about Voltaire and Fritz. (Which I thoroughly approve of.)

I agree! Voltaire and Fritz have an abundance of page time and have had it for nearly 300 years. Let unfairly forgotten Émilie have her moment in the sun in a book ABOUT HER. Fritz, the American Revolution can be about your tobacco habit that's probably going to kill you in 10 years, but Émilie's book has to be about her. That's a fair trade, okay? :P

 I get the impression from this book that her real strength was in synthesizing what other people had done into a coherent whole

Agreed; I got the impression from my reading that she took Newton's Principia and converted the geometric proofs into calculus proofs, which is a super impressive achievement and definitely creative and original work, but it wasn't breaking new ground, like inventing physics or discovering new laws of physics.

Also, if Bodanis is correct, if she'd hadn't had her hands tied by not being able to carry out her theoretical physics experiments because Voltaire's EGO, maybe she could have discovered more new things. He claims that she had the equipment and the know-how to do a number of optical experiments and astronomical observations that weren't done until decades after her death, by people who got famous.

That being said, there appears to have additionally been a problem of people attributing all her work to MEN, which is NOT OKAY WITH ME.

I saw that too. NOT OKAY.

Re: Émilie du Châtelet: Daring Genius of the Enlightenment (Judith P. Zinsser) - general thoughts

[cahn]

Agreed; I got the impression from my reading that she took Newton's Principia and converted the geometric proofs into calculus proofs, which is a super impressive achievement and definitely creative and original work, but it wasn't breaking new ground, like inventing physics or discovering new laws of physics.

Yep, same for me.

Also, if Bodanis is correct, if she'd hadn't had her hands tied by not being able to carry out her theoretical physics experiments because Voltaire's EGO, maybe she could have discovered more new things. He claims that she had the equipment and the know-how to do a number of optical experiments and astronomical observations that weren't done until decades after her death, by people who got famous.

I don't know about this. I mean, it's probably true she had the equipment and know-how, but that doesn't always translate to doing the right experiment for the right reasons. I mean, maybe? But we'll never know what she would have been like without Voltaire around. (Time-traveling Zinsser: I'm telling you, dump him!)