The Salon Essay, Research Paper

Jean Le Rond d Alembert

Quote:

Thus metaphysics and mathematics are, among all the sciences that belong to reason, those in which imagination has the greatest role. I beg pardon of those delicate spirits who are detractors of mathematics for saying this …. The imagination in a mathematician who creates makes no less difference than in a poet who invents…. Of all the great men of antiquity, Archimedes may be the one who most deserves to be placed beside Homer.

(Discours Preliminaire de L Encyclopedie 47-48)

Jean Le Rond d Alembert was a French mathematician and physicist who developed the early stages of the science now known as calculus. He was also the leading editor in Diderot s Encyclopedie where the quote was taken from above. Along with Diderot and Voltaire, he was one of the leading figures of the enlightenment in France, and studied many interesting ideas of science and mathematics.

Alembert was born in Paris, France, on November 16, 1717. He was the illegitimate child of the chevalier Desctouches. When Jean was very little, his mother left him on the front steps of St. Jean-le-Rond, a church, and he was then named after the church as was customary for this situation. Later he was moved to a family outside of the cathedral, and this family treated him well and provided money for his education.

In the same year Alembert was elected into the French Academy, his first essays on calculus were noticed. This was probably due to the influence of his father. Nearly all of his mathematical works were produced in the years 1743-1754, one of which he discuses the internal forces of inertia, and later the principal of fluids.

Due to Alembert being a scientist and mathematician, the resources used did not have much information on Alembert s opinion on the meaning of life and so on, so the following are mearly inferences on what Jean le Rond D Alembert probably believed in. This is not a real quote, just a simulated conference between Alembert and a fellow scholar of the day.

Alembert: Hello, fellow scholar of the enlightenment period! How are you on this lovely, yet scientific morning?

Friend: I am just great Jean. How s the research coming?

Alembert: Oh, just fantastic. Not only have I concluded on scientific law, but I have also found the existence of God!!

Friend: Oh really… do tell.

Alembert: OK. God created all the elements, because if he didn t how else would they be here? In addition, there are certain things that we just except as true, such as the law of inertia which I explained in Traite de dynamique (Published in 1743) and the principal of fluids. It can t just be that way for no reason. God must have created it!!!!

Friend: However absurd that sounds, I believe it. What else have you learned through your studies?

Alembert: Yes, I have also concluded my standing on education. If I hadn t received the education my father paid for me, I would have nothing I have now, so… education is very important!!

Friend: Fantastic. Thank you so much for your enlightenment . You have been so helpful, not.

Alembert: So long fellow student of the post renaissance period we like to call the enlightenment!!!!!

In conclusion, Alembert was an overachiever of sorts and dispite his strange childhood upbringing, turned out to be a very productive scholar. His accomplishments for physics and mathematics will be influential forever in the sciences, and he will always be remembered as one of the leading figures in the enlightenment period.

A Short Account of the History of Mathematics (4th edition, 1908) by W.W. Rouse Ball.

Alembert, Jean Le Rond D , Grolier Electronic Publishing, Inc. 1993.

Bridenthal, Koonz, editor. Becoming Visible: Women in European History, Exerpt from Women in the Age of Light, Kleinbaum, Abby.

Discours Preliminaire de L Encyclopedie, Tome1, 1967. pp 47-48.

TL Hankins, Jean d Alembert: science and englightenment, New York, 1990.