Description Interprets an “increasingly visible weariness and distrust towards democracy” and proposes the construction of contemporary “Academies of Art” to aid in the education of “mature” citizens. Lachenmann interpolates his remarks into two discourses. First, […]
Emile, or on Education
Description Outlines a program for educating children according to the precepts of Nature. Heavily influenced by Locke’s philosophy of human understanding, this 1762 treatise argues that parents should pursue a “negative education”: avoid formal schooling […]
The Wild Girl, Natural Man, and the Monster: Dangerous Experiments in the Age of Enlightenment
Description Explores Enlightenment optimism about the perfectibility of mankind by looking at efforts to educate and “civilize” children. Chapters consider reactions to so-called “wild children”; utopian pedagogical schemes (including efforts to apply Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Emile, […]
An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump
Description Captures the complicated attitude towards science during the Enlightenment. A man is suffocating a bird in an air pump, while (most of) his audience looks on in wonder and fear. Shows that scientific demonstrations […]
Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier (1743-1794) and His Wife (Marie Anne Pierrette Paulze, 1758-1836)
Description Reveals the gendered division of labor in many scientific households. Antoine, seated, is at work on a chemistry treatise; his wife, Marie-Anne, takes a break from her drawing board to look over his shoulder. […]
Selected Philosophical and Scientific Writings
Description Brings together a collection of Du Châtelet’s writing and shows that she was much more than Voltaire’s mistress; she was a philosophe in her own right. This volume not only provides a good introduction […]
Man a Machine
Description Julien Offray de La Mettrie was one of the earliest French Enlightenment materialists. Exiled from France after publishing a book (A Natural History of the Soul) arguing that psychical phenomena could be explained by […]
The Paradox of the Automaton: From Diderot to Cybernetics
Description A concise and provocative history of the idea of automata from Diderot to the present. She argues that the automaton is the cornerstone of modern knowledge and its powers. Creator Martineau, Julie Publisher Montréal: […]
Machine and Organism
Description Canguilhem inverts the normal scientific question–what is the mechanism underlying this organic process?–and asks how machines are organic. He traces the history of the relationships between organism and machine from the ancient Greek political […]
The Guillotine and the Terror
Description A very original if somewhat disturbing book on the imaginary of the French Revolution. Arasse, a historian of art, discusses the stories that were created about and around the guillotine. He shows how the […]