Volume 51, Number 19 · December 2, 2004
The Ways of Genius
By Anthony Grafton
The Newtonian Moment: Science and the Making of Modern Culture
an exhibition at the New York Public Library, October 8, 2004–February 5, 2005
The Newtonian Moment: Isaac Newton and the Making of Modern Culture
Catalog of the exhibition by Mordechai Feingold
New York Public Library/Oxford University Press, 218 pp., $40.00; $22.50 (paper)
The walls of the Gottesman Exhibition Hall at the New York Public Library will display until next February a variety of colorful, fascinating creatures. Voltaire's great friend, the distinguished philosopher Mme. du Châtelet, appears more than once. She sits smiling, in a portrait, next to an armillary sphere that symbolizes her expert work—far more expert than Voltaire's—on Newtonian science. Elsewhere she strides up a rocky hill toward the Temple of Truth, as a clutch of Muses looks on admiringly. She even turns up suspended in midair on the title page of Voltaire's Elements of Newton's Philosophy, borne by some enthusiastic cherubs, and wields a mirror to reflect the light that emanates from the sky above and behind Newton downward onto her hardworking lover.
Review, 3899 words
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