The planets swung through space at a rate and in directions that Newton's laws described; a cannonball fired in the air would land exactly where Newton's calculations of its trajectory showed that it would land.
It really was as if we were living inside a vast windup clock, and all the laws Newton had seen were simply the gears and cogs that made it work. But if we could demand a rational explanation of the grand universe beyond our planet, Arouet wondered, shouldn't we be able to demand the same down here on earth? France had a king who demanded obedience, on the grounds that he was God's regent on earth. Aristocrats got authority from the king, and it was impious to question this. But what if the same analysis used in science by Newton could be used to reveal the role of money or vanity or other hidden forces in the political world as well?
By the time Arouet went back to Paris, three years later, he had begun pushing his new ideas, in private letters and printed essays. In a world of clear, levelheaded analysis of true forces, his humiliation outside the gates of de Sully would never have been allowed. Arouet would support Newton's new vision accordingly his whole life long. He was a good supporter to have, for Arouet was only the name he'd been born with. He'd already largely put it to the side for the pen name by which he was better known: Voltaire.
But even a skilled writer, however eager to push a particular thinker, can't shift a nation on his own. Voltaire needed to he able to place his talents within a switching center that could multiply them. The king's Academy of Sciences was too backward-looking; too locked into the old guard's way of thinking. The salons of Paris wouldn't do either. The usual hostesses were rich enough to keep a tame poet or two ("If you neglect to enroll yourself among the courtesans," Voltaire observed, "you are . . . crushed"), but there was no space for a real thinker. He needed help. And he found it.
. . .
He'd actually met her without realizing it, fifteen years before, visiting her father when she was just a girl. Emilie de Breteuil's family lived overlooking the Tuileries gardens in Paris, in an apartment with thirty rooms and seventeen servants. But although her brothers and sisters turned out as expected, Emilie was different, as her father wrote: "My youngest flaunts her mind, and frightens away the suitors. . . . We don't know what to do with her."
When she was sixteen they brought her to Versailles, but still she stood out. Imagine the actress Geena Davis, Mensa member and onetime action-film star, trapped in the early eighteenth century. Emilie had long black hair and a look of perpetual startled innocence, and although most other debutante types wanted nothing more than to use their looks to get a husband, Emilie was reading Descartes's analytic geometry, and wanted potential suitors to keep their distance.
She'd been a tomboy as a child, loving to climb trees, and she was also taller than average, and—best of all -since her parents had been worried she'd end up clumsy, they'd paid for fencing lessons for years. She challenged Jacques de Brun, whose position was roughly equivalent to head of the king's bodyguard detail, to a demonstration duel, in public, on the fine wood floor of the great Hall of Arms. She was fast enough, and strong enough, with the thrusts and parries, to remind any overeager suitors that they would be wise to leave her alone.
Her intellect left her isolated at Versailles, for there was no one with whom she could share her excitement about the wondrous insights she was discovering through the work of Descartes and other researchers. (At least there were certain advantages in being immersed in equations—she found it easy to memorize cards at the blackjack table.)
When Emilie was nineteen, she chose one of the least objectionable courtiers as a husband. He was a wealthy soldier named du Châtelet, who would conveniently be on distant campaigns much
It really was as if we were living inside a vast windup clock, and all the laws Newton had seen were simply the gears and cogs that made it work. But if we could demand a rational explanation of the grand universe beyond our planet, Arouet wondered, shouldn't we be able to demand the same down here on earth? France had a king who demanded obedience, on the grounds that he was God's regent on earth. Aristocrats got authority from the king, and it was impious to question this. But what if the same analysis used in science by Newton could be used to reveal the role of money or vanity or other hidden forces in the political world as well?
By the time Arouet went back to Paris, three years later, he had begun pushing his new ideas, in private letters and printed essays. In a world of clear, levelheaded analysis of true forces, his humiliation outside the gates of de Sully would never have been allowed. Arouet would support Newton's new vision accordingly his whole life long. He was a good supporter to have, for Arouet was only the name he'd been born with. He'd already largely put it to the side for the pen name by which he was better known: Voltaire.
But even a skilled writer, however eager to push a particular thinker, can't shift a nation on his own. Voltaire needed to he able to place his talents within a switching center that could multiply them. The king's Academy of Sciences was too backward-looking; too locked into the old guard's way of thinking. The salons of Paris wouldn't do either. The usual hostesses were rich enough to keep a tame poet or two ("If you neglect to enroll yourself among the courtesans," Voltaire observed, "you are . . . crushed"), but there was no space for a real thinker. He needed help. And he found it.
. . .
He'd actually met her without realizing it, fifteen years before, visiting her father when she was just a girl. Emilie de Breteuil's family lived overlooking the Tuileries gardens in Paris, in an apartment with thirty rooms and seventeen servants. But although her brothers and sisters turned out as expected, Emilie was different, as her father wrote: "My youngest flaunts her mind, and frightens away the suitors. . . . We don't know what to do with her."
When she was sixteen they brought her to Versailles, but still she stood out. Imagine the actress Geena Davis, Mensa member and onetime action-film star, trapped in the early eighteenth century. Emilie had long black hair and a look of perpetual startled innocence, and although most other debutante types wanted nothing more than to use their looks to get a husband, Emilie was reading Descartes's analytic geometry, and wanted potential suitors to keep their distance.
She'd been a tomboy as a child, loving to climb trees, and she was also taller than average, and—best of all -since her parents had been worried she'd end up clumsy, they'd paid for fencing lessons for years. She challenged Jacques de Brun, whose position was roughly equivalent to head of the king's bodyguard detail, to a demonstration duel, in public, on the fine wood floor of the great Hall of Arms. She was fast enough, and strong enough, with the thrusts and parries, to remind any overeager suitors that they would be wise to leave her alone.
Her intellect left her isolated at Versailles, for there was no one with whom she could share her excitement about the wondrous insights she was discovering through the work of Descartes and other researchers. (At least there were certain advantages in being immersed in equations—she found it easy to memorize cards at the blackjack table.)
When Emilie was nineteen, she chose one of the least objectionable courtiers as a husband. He was a wealthy soldier named du Châtelet, who would conveniently be on distant campaigns much
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