Shirley A. Roe

Radical nature in the Encyclopédie

This paper offers an analysis of the role radical biological ideas played in the French Encyclopedie in the mid-eighteenth century. Based on new observations and experiments on the microscopic world, these biological ideas supported a radical view of active matter and threatened to destroy the traditional view of an unchanging, hierarchical social order. This radical thread is traced through several articles from the Encyclopedie, and is shown to have played a key role in the furor that erupted in the early 1750s after the first volumes were published and then, more decisively, when the whole enterprise was shut down as being too subversive.

Science Against the Unbelievers the Correspondence of Bonnet and Needham, 1760-1780

Charles Bonnet (1720-1793), protestant de Geneve, issu de huguenots venus de France en 1572 et le pretre catholique anglais John Turberville Needham (1713-1781) echangerent des lettres pendant vingt ans, dont 53 survivent (26 de Bonnet, 27 de Needham). Bien que consacres tous deux aux sciences naturelles, notamment a la biologie, ils traitent dans leurs lettres les principaux problemes de leur epoque, sur les plans philosophique, religieux et politique. Tous deux sont opposes au mouvement philosophique des Lumieres et veulent promouvoir une science et une philosophie dans un cadre religieux, en opposition directe aux incroyants. Edition des lettres, toutes en francais