Studies in History

and Philosophy
of Science
Stud. Hist. Phil. Sci. 36 (2005) 598–606
www.elsevier.com/locate/shpsa

Essay review

A rich life in science: the case of

Pierre Louis Moreau de Maupertuis
Kathleen Wellman
Clements Department of History, PO Box 750176, Southern Methodist University,
Dallas, TX 75275-0176, USA

The man who flattened the earth: Maupertuis and the sciences in the Enlightenment
Mary Terrall; University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2003, pp. x+408, Price £27.50
US$39.00 hardback, ISBN 0-226-79360-5.

Mary TerrallÕs book, The man who flattened the earth, presents a compelling study
of Pierre-Louis Moreau de Maupertuis as an exemplar of the life of a man of science
in the eighteenth century. In many ways, Maupertuis seems the prototypical eigh-
teenth-century scientist; his range of interests transcended disciplinary lines; his ca-
reer reflected the personal and professional rivalries of the day; and his success
depended on patronage and on the careful negotiation of professional waters. In
other ways, MaupertuisÕs life as a man of science seems much richer and more di-
verse than that of many of his fellow scientists. He had an early career in the military;
he gained election to the Académie des sciences as a young man; he was sponsored by
great scientists of the day, like Bernoulli; and he lived the life of an adventurer, lead-
ing an expedition to Lapland and following Frederick the Great on a military cam-
paign. So rich is MaupertuisÕs life that it seems rather surprising that he was not the
focus of such a study earlier. One might have expected that, as soon as the history of
science began to turn its attention to the contextualization of the science, Maupertuis
would have been an obvious focus of interest. But appreciation of Maupertuis has

E-mail address: kwellman@smu.edu (K. Wellman).

0039-3681/$ - see front matter Ó 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.shpsa.2005.07.002
 K. Wellman / Stud. Hist. Phil. Sci. 36 (2005) 598–606 599

been complicated by the nature of his principle scientific work and his rather precip-
itous fall from scientific preeminence.
Maupertuis was a mathematician whose work addressed issues of such complexity
that he required the assistance of his more mathematically gifted contemporaries,
Johann Bernoulli and Leonhard Euler. Prior to TerrallÕs study, the conventional ap-
proach to Maupertuis has been to place him in the history of mathematics and to
direct such work to historians of mathematics, the audience where his complex math-
ematical work could find ready comprehension. Such an approach, as TerrallÕs study
more than amply demonstrates, not only gives short shrift to many of MaupertuisÕs
scientific ideas but also does not consider the rich complexity of his lived experience
of eighteenth-century science both as a practitioner of science and as a man of letters.
Terrall places MaupertuisÕs work into a cogent narrative of eighteenth-century sci-
ence and his life into a broad context of eighteenth-century culture. As a result, that
narrative is accessible and of interest to a much broader audience.
Terrall begins her study with a discussion of a portrait Maupertuis commissioned
after his expedition to Lapland to demonstrate his great preoccupation with self-
presentation. The issue of Ôself-fashioningÕ is just one example of the many ways Terrall
uses the new scholarship on the culture of the Enlightenment to illuminate and to an-
chor the intellectual and profession world of Maupertuis. She highlights the role of
sociability in the scientific community. Sociability, as recent historical studies have
demonstrated, was rooted in conversation, and conversation about ideas and texts
was crucial to the dissemination of Enlightenment.1 Science also played a central role
in the broader aims of the Enlightenment; it could be understood as reason mobilized
to defeat superstition and thus deployed to serve the social agenda of the Enlighten-
ment. Terrall presents Maupertuis as a scientist who understood that he not only had
to appeal to the academic establishment but he also had to be controversial enough to
provoke conversation. As a result, he can be identified with the Enlightenment in both
style and substance. Maupertuis walked a narrow line between cultivating the aca-
demically respectable and the controversial in his quest to participate in the sociability
of both the academy and the salon; he had to negotiate and exploit both worlds.
Maupertuis was very careful about how he presented himself and his work; he
considered the response of his audience and sought the audience where his work
would have the greatest impact. Maupertuis also cultivated different audiences with
different kinds of publication. He was also intent on creating a public persona for
himself, and he understood that this goal required publication in popular venues.
Although he courted controversy when it could heighten interest in his work, Mau-
pertuis was also careful to avoid controversy where it could damage his relationship
with a patron or the Académie. For example, Maupertuis deliberately chose to

1
Perhaps the most significant impetus to studies of sociability has been J. HabermasÕs The structural
transformation of the public sphere (Habermas, 1989). In more recent times Dena Goodman has explored
Enlightenment conversation and sociability in the salon in Goodman (1994); Dan Gordon considers
the relationship between public culture and the political in Gordon (1994); Roger Chartier has emphasized
the integral connection between reading and conversation in Chartier (1987); and conversation in the
Enlightenment is the focus of Craveri (2002).
600 K. Wellman / Stud. Hist. Phil. Sci. 36 (2005) 598–606

present to the Royal Society and to publish in the Transactions of the Royal Society
the works in which he was most favorably disposed to Newton.
Patronage too was critical to the development of a career. Patrons were demand-
ing, and intellectual patrons sometimes required adherence to their positions. Mau-
pertuis was careful to cultivate and to retain the support of academic patrons and to
offend no patron by the stances he took. He thus played down his growing appreci-
ation of Newtonian attraction in his correspondence with Bernoulli who remained
committed to Cartesian vortices and the Leibnizian calculus. Equally problematic
for an eighteenth-century man of science was the need to maneuver in a world of elite
science sponsored by monarchs. Maupertuis was more successful than most in main-
taining cordial relations with Frederick the Great of Prussia, although he, like many
of those the king sponsored, had difficulty procuring sufficient financial support.
When he became president of the Berlin Academy of Science, Maupertuis had to en-
sure that the monarchÕs expectations of the results of his sponsorship were met. Per-
haps most telling about the need of scientists to cultivate strategies to advance their
careers, to scramble to attract sufficient financial support, and to keep themselves in
the public eye is that Maupertuis moved about so extensively that some contempo-
raries described him as ubiquitous as a flea.
TerrallÕs book develops along chronological lines, but she carefully correlates
all developments in MaupertuisÕs life to the context in which they occurred. Her
method, as she notes, is to trace in parallel tracks his scholarly accomplishments
and his life as it is reflected in his correspondence. Although she has the tremendous
advantage for a historian of having MaupertuisÕs extensive correspondence, Terrall
makes full and effective use of it to explore his place in eighteenth-century culture.
She begins by examining MaupertuisÕs family background. She suggests that his
fatherÕs career as a merchant and privateer shaped MaupertuisÕs sense of his own sci-
entific career as a great adventure analogous to the life of the privateer. It was also
significant to MaupertuisÕs subsequent career that his father hired a proficient math-
ematical tutor for him. His father was concerned to find an appropriate career for his
son and ultimately chose to set him up in a company of the kingÕs guards. Although
the company was based in Lille, Maupertuis spent his winters in Paris studying
mathematics and cultivating scientific and social connections. The café culture of
Paris proved particularly attractive to him; he could both establish a reputation
for wit and meet members of the Académie des sciences. From those cafés, he could
move into the more exclusive circle of the salons. In 1723, when Maupertuis resigned
his commission, he was virtually ensured election into the Académie des sciences.
(One of the most consistent touchstones of MaupertuisÕs life will be his deliberate de-
sire to negotiate his relationship to the Académie. Even when he was forced to give
up his own position to become the president of the Berlin Academy, Maupertuis
remained deeply sensitive to and aware of his reputation within the Académie.) Elec-
tion to the Académie not only gave Maupertuis a venue for his work but also social
status in Paris and the international Republic of Letters. Indeed, MaupertuisÕs career
is more than sufficient support for the cosmopolitan character of the enlightened
form of that republic; Maupertuis maintained extensive connections to English New-
tonians, Swiss mathematicians, Prussian academicians, and so on.
 K. Wellman / Stud. Hist. Phil. Sci. 36 (2005) 598–606 601

Throughout her study, Terrall points out the ways in which Maupertuis navigated
the complex professional concerns and the various intellectual networks of eigh-
teenth-century science. She well understands that the practice of science in the eigh-
teenth century is no less dependent on sociability, hierarchy, and patronage than any
other form of eighteenth-century intellectual life, and she demonstrates how these is-
sues operated in MaupertuisÕs science and his professional success.
As Maupertuis began his work as a novice academic, he investigated curves and
their properties. He tried deliberately to set his work within accepted theories but
also to develop something new on these topics. He approached Bernoulli, the most
famous mathematician of the day, recognizing that he needed the support of a more
talented mathematician than he to provide the mathematical foundations for his
work. Maupertuis traveled to Basel to immerse himself in Leibnizian mathematics
by studying with its most ardent proponent. Ironically, in light of BernoulliÕs great
partisanship for Leibniz, Bernoulli also gave him the means to understand NewtonÕs
mathematics. The relationship between the two men was mutually beneficial,
although it proved a challenge for Maupertuis to preserve it. Bernoulli, as Terrall
points out, could mold Maupertuis and use him to gain support for BernoulliÕs
own approach to mechanics in France. Maupertuis was the direct beneficiary of Ber-
noulliÕs greater mathematical ability. Bernoulli both taught him more sophisticated
mathematics and edited his scientific papers.
Although Terrall is acutely aware of the externalist considerations affecting Mau-
pertuisÕs science, she in no way neglects its internalist dimension. That is to say, she
not only offers a complete and compelling reading of MaupertuisÕs scientific context
and successes in the social sphere, she also evinces a thorough appreciation of the
internalist debates in mathematics, science, and philosophy and clearly situates Mau-
pertuis within them. Terrall begins with the vis viva debate (the issue of living force in
matter), a debate that was especially lively in the 1720s. This debate also brought to
the fore a controversy between Cartesians and Leibnizians. The Cartesians, under
the influence of Bernard de Fontenelle, were predominant in the academy, although
Bernoulli had brought Leibnizian calculus to French mathematics. Because he was
rather dependent on Bernoulli for refining his own understanding of mathematics,
Maupertuis did not get directly involved in the vis viva controversy; he did not have
a personal stake in the question, but he also had to be careful not to antagonize Ber-
noulli. In the late 1720s, Maupertuis went to London where he met Newtonian
mathematicians. (Terrall refutes the conventional contention that this is the point
at which Maupertuis became a Newtonian; she insists there is no evidence for this
conversion until 1731.) After his exposure to English mathematicians, Maupertuis
was interested in finding a Newtonian topic he could treat by means of a Leibnizian
calculus.
One of the great advantages of TerrallÕs work is that she is not intent on produc-
ing a heroic version of her subjectÕs life; she recognizes the strategies Maupertuis pur-
sued to advance his career and she notes when those strategies occasionally
backfired. For example, when Maupertuis submitted a paper on the rotation of fluid
bodies, which was published in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, the
piece did not impress English mathematicians as contributing anything new to the
602 K. Wellman / Stud. Hist. Phil. Sci. 36 (2005) 598–606

discussion (p. 66). TerrallÕs study also demonstrates just how calculatingly careerist
Maupertuis was; careerist considerations were frequently decisive in determining the
direction of his scientific work. The case of Maupertuis then seems striking evidence
(if the history of science still requires it) against the progressive saga of the history of
science, which still dominates some texts and virtually all textbook accounts of the
Scientific Revolution. In such accounts, lone geniuses develop ideas in isolation
but inspired by previous lone geniuses—the Copernicus, Galileo, Newton rendition
of the history of science. MaupertuisÕs work in science is undeniably not that of an
isolated genius, and his career is much more complex, more pragmatic, and much
messier than any heroic tale.
One of the issues central to the development of MaupertuisÕs career is the prom-
inence of DescartesÕs science and the resistance to Newton within Académie des sci-
ences. This resistance was due in large part to FontenelleÕs commitment to
DescartesÕs mathematics, in particular, and to Descartes, more generally, as a source
of French national pride. Whenever the Academy announced prize competitions for
topics concerning gravity, the winning entries would invoke Cartesian vortices. (This
points to a minor inconsistency in this study; Terrall both notes that Bernoulli obvi-
ously pandered to the intellectual prejudices of the Academy, yet she maintains
Ôprizes did not represent the AcademyÕs position in any obvious senseÕ (p. 59).) Mau-
pertuisÕs path through the intellectual and institutional world of mathematics was
complicated by BernoulliÕs patronage. Bernoulli insisted on vortices when Mau-
pertuis was trying to reconcile Descartes and Newton. As Maupertuis worked
around issues that impinged on Newtonianism (for some of his contemporaries vis
viva seemed uncomfortably close to gravity), he was careful not to take any position,
which might make him a critic of Bernoulli. Nonetheless, his contemporaries began
to identify him with Newtonianism. Ultimately, Maupertuis himself compared vor-
tices to gravity in favor of gravity; a point at which he clearly distinguished himself
from Bernoulli. However, Bernoulli had reason to maintain his relationship with
Maupertuis; he was competing for a prize for which Maupertuis was a prize commis-
sioner. As Maupertuis became better connected, he could in turn be of use to his pa-
tron. Eventually Maupertuis became part of the established generation; younger
scholars looked to him for support and, although Terrall does not explore this issue,
they likely felt they had to appeal to him. While TerrallÕs study treats MaupertuisÕs
difficulties in dealing with members of the Berlin Academy, they might well have had
a different tale to tell of their interactions.
MaupertuisÕs ultimate identification with Newton proved useful to him and gave
him great social cachet. By 1732, when Voltaire was working on the Philosophical
letters, Maupertuis was sufficiently associated with Newtonianism that Voltaire
sought his help with the theory of gravity. Voltaire had made Newtonianism a hall-
mark of avant-garde ideas. Mathematics became a fashionable pursuit of elite
women, and Maupertuis became Mme de ChateletÕs math tutor and lover.
Maupertuis continued to adapt his scientific work to topical pursuits. In the 1730s
there was great interest in geodesy. This interest arose in conjunction with renewed
attention to gravity. Debates about cosmology became debates about how much the
earthÕs shape deviated from the spherical. This question too divided Cartesians and
 K. Wellman / Stud. Hist. Phil. Sci. 36 (2005) 598–606 603

Newtonians. Questions of the authority of science also arose; how should measure-
ments be taken and whose measurements could be trusted? Two expeditions were
carried out under the auspices of the Académie des sciences. They were intended to
show the power of the crown and its ability to underwrite useful knowledge. Mau-
pertuis was a key figure in the expedition to the north.
Jacques Cassini (sometimes called Cassini II) insisted that his calculations sup-
ported an elongated earth. But during the 1730 several mathematicians had ques-
tioned whether the earthÕs measurements could be extrapolated adequately from
local measurements. Maupertuis did not challenge Cassini directly; he did however
suggest that an expedition to the north would be absolutely essential, if one were
to determine whether the earth was less elongated than Cassini suggested or less flat-
tened than NewtonÕs theory predicted. Furthermore, Maupertuis proposed to use
English instruments, an implicit threat to the authority of CassiniÕs measurements
taken with French instruments.
The results of this mission called into question the elongated view of the earth, as
the title puts it, Ôflattening the earthÕ. Which raises the question of why Maupertuis
not Newton is the man who flattened the earth? Once again, Maupertuis corrobo-
rated Newton. The title of TerrallÕs book, while perhaps provoking some interest
in finding out what it means, in no way encapsulates the range of the book or the
extent of MaupertuisÕs interests and accomplishments.
Maupertuis clearly understood the importance of the expedition to his reputation.
He recognized that the published account of the expedition would play a central role
in presenting his ideas and in gaining credibility for his own career. Maupertuis and
Abbé Reginald Outhier, who together wrote the account, were concerned to present
as clear an account at possible; they also intended to let the readings from their supe-
rior instruments and their calculations carry the day. This text is an important exam-
ple of transparency in reporting results conveying scientific authority for those
results.
In the aftermath of his expedition to Lapland, Maupertuis presented the mission
so as to enhance his reputation and to define his role in the history of science. He
may well have been attempting to cast himself in the role of heroic, individual scien-
tist—a view enshrined in Jean le Rond dÕAlembertÕs account of the history of science
in the ÔPreliminary DiscourseÕ to the Encyclopédie. His mission was explicitly cast as
Ômission impossibleÕ, conducted against great difficulties and couched in terms of
great drama. All the fearful and unpleasant aspects of the mission were highlighted.
But, Terrall insists, the adventurous character did not outweigh scientific and empir-
ical value of the mission. MaupertuisÕs findings led him to refute Cassini directly;
Cassini represented the accepted standards of astronomical practice and Maupertuis
defended the authority of his observations and experience. Some elongated earth
Cartesians tried to reconcile disparate numbers, and the discrepancies led to three
years of verbal dispute, which the Académie, in the interest of civility, did not
publish.
Terrall offers an especially persuasive reading of MaupertuisÕs portrait first to
introduce her study and again to discuss the promotional and professional value
of his expedition. The mission and the portrait were intended to appeal to the public;
604 K. Wellman / Stud. Hist. Phil. Sci. 36 (2005) 598–606

both were designed to reinforce his role as a heroic man of science and letters. To
further enhance his role as a man of letters, Maupertuis turned to a different method
of presentation for his work on mechanics and astronomy; he deployed satire to
place his work within current debates. He sought not only to find the most appropri-
ate audience but also to adopt his style to best present his work. Recognizing that
literary style was crucial to the presentation and dissemination of scientific findings
to an eighteenth-century audience, Maupertuis experimented with various styles; he
often hit on one engaging enough to capture public attention. Some of his works
were explicitly directed toward a more popular audience, including his Essay on cos-
mology and his Letters on a comet. His quest to be a Ôman of lettersÕ was crowned by
his election to the Académie française, a rare distinction for a scientist. It is crucial to
recognize, as Terrall does, the literary and popular character of a successful scientific
career in the Enlightenment, which Maupertuis so richly embodied.
Even after Newtonianism had become fashionable, Maupertuis did not want to be
considered simply as a Newtonian. He was intent on both producing original work
and defining general principles drawn from specific research findings. He turned to
questions of rest and equilibrium in hopes of deducing a general principle that could
be extended to all of mechanics. For Maupertuis, the principle of least action served
this purpose. It allowed him to posit GodÕs role in the universe, to solve specific
mechanical problems, and to understand causes behind those problems. One of
the great strengths of TerrallÕs study is that, as Maupertuis shifted his attention to
different kinds of questions, she is able to explain clearly the contemporary state
of those questions and their significance to the eighteenth century. Maupertuis career
offers many interesting examples, as Terrall reveals, of the nonlinear character of sci-
entific investigation and development; issues become topical for reasons that are not
entirely scientific and then become less so, often for external reasons as well.
In the 1740s, Maupertuis extended his scientific work into questions of generation
and heredity. Such questions were controversial but also very topical. Joseph Tremb-
layÕs regenerating polyp had generated much public and scientific interest. In the
interests of protecting his career, Maupertuis pursued these politically and religiously
controversial topics entirely outside the Académie des sciences. This fact ought to
provoke consideration of the role of institutional science in constraining scientific
developments in areas deemed too controversial in political and religious terms.
What kinds of science were neglected because of the conservative character of insti-
tutions like the Academy? How much was Maupertuis protected and his career en-
hanced by the fact that he had sufficient literary style to present his more
controversial scientific works in dialogues, satires or other literary forms?
Maupertuis explored questions of generation and heredity by discussing the spe-
cific case of the albino Negro in a speculative manner that the Académie would not
have sanctioned. His text on these issues, Vénus physique, treated them within the
context of the philosophical tradition but also from an erotic perspective. Some of
the most adventurously speculative texts of the Enlightenment treat philosophical
and scientific issues spiced by sexual titillation. Voltaire, La Mettrie and Diderot
all produced texts proposing philosophically dangerous ideas cloaked in provocative
language. As Robert Darnton has noted, Therese or philosophy in the bedroom was
 K. Wellman / Stud. Hist. Phil. Sci. 36 (2005) 598–606 605

the runaway best seller of the Enlightenment.2 Surely, philosophes, writing on scien-
tific topics, hoped to tap this rich vein of topical erotic/intellectual interest.
Maupertuis posited that affinity could explain how organisms emerged from com-
ponents of both parents. ÔAffinityÕ had great resonance in contemporary scientific
vocabulary. It could be used to describe chemical reactions, and it seemed readily
comparable to Newtonian attraction. Maupertuis made the association more obvi-
ous by forming his discussion around a series of questions, just as Newton had done
in the Opticks. Maupertuis was undeniably successful in packaging and presenting
himself and his ideas and in identifying his ideas with others that were current or top-
ical. However, it is worth wondering whether the very features which helped to en-
sure his success as an eighteenth-century man of letters undermined the durability of
his scientific work? In other words, did the great adaptability he showed in present-
ing his ideas tie them, in style and substance, too narrowly to a specific context?
After rejecting earlier offers, Maupertuis eventually accepted Frederick the
GreatÕs offer of the presidency of the Berlin Academy in 1745. In his new position,
he faced the dissonance between what Frederick promised and what he delivered.
But if the funding, support, and the efforts of his colleagues did not live up to his
expectations, Maupertuis could, nonetheless, use the Academy as a vehicle to en-
hance his own status. He experienced first hand the complexity and controversies
surrounding the administration of prize competitions, to say nothing of the myriad
demands made on the fledgling Academy to provide services for the king. The Acad-
emy was expected to provide German translations of works in foreign languages and
to supervise publications of academy materials in addition to pursuing its own aca-
demic work. One of the most unpleasant facets of MaupertuisÕs time in Berlin was his
polemic with Samuel König, who accused him of presenting a Leibnizian idea as his
own. When Voltaire wielded his polemical sword against Maupertuis, the stakes
were raised, and the dispute became an international cause célèbre. Unfortunately
for Maupertuis and his subsequent historical reputation, he has often been discussed
in conventional Enlightenment works simply in terms of this dispute. The Mau-
pertuis–König/Voltaire dispute is not as central to TerrallÕs account as one might ex-
pect; Terrall is inclined to treat it as insignificant and the issue without merit. Given
its centrality to standards sources, a more extensive defense of Maupertuis would
have been helpful. However, TerrallÕs study should ensure that Maupertuis can no
longer be treated in such a slighting manner in standard sources.
MaupertuisÕs example raises a number of interesting questions about the nature
and practice of science, which should be raised when considering the work and sub-
sequent reputation of other scientists: Does the cultivation of controversy advance or
impede a scientific career? What happens to the reputation of a scientist who works
in unconventional ways or works across disciplines in a way that does not corre-
spond to later disciplinary divisions? What difference does it make which philosoph-
ical horse one backs? Or, how much is MaupertuisÕs subsequent reputation affected
by his attempts to integrate Leibniz into Newtonianism? Does the fact that Leibniz

2
Darnton (1996).
606 K. Wellman / Stud. Hist. Phil. Sci. 36 (2005) 598–606

has not been not well integrated into the history of science or philosophy affect Mau-
pertuisÕs influence or subsequent reputation?
TerrallÕs work is a model of sensitivity to the cultural context of science. Mau-
pertuis emerges as a scientist who worked within the broad context of society, with
every aspect of that relationship carefully negotiated by him. Studies such as this one
should make the internalist/externalist debate irrelevant. Terrall has produced a
study, which demonstrates that only when both approaches are utilized as a founda-
tion of scholarship can the full dimensions of a life of an eighteenth-century scientist
be appreciated. Terrall has amply fulfilled her mission to treat Maupertuis Ôin light of
what it meant to do science and be a man of science in the eighteenth centuryÕ (p. 7).
This work is a classic in defining the social world of science, and it should provoke
questions about the contemporary social world of the scientist and the social con-
struction of science.

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