Dr James Fowler, Senior Lecturer in the Department of Modern Languages, will be giving a talk entitled entitled ‘Words and Things in Voltaire and Newton’ at King’s College London (KCL), as part of a research seminar series in ‘French Studies: Things’, on Wednesday 2 December 2015.

Based mainly on Lettres philosophiques (1734), James’ talk will show how in that text Voltaire exploits philosopher John Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689) in order to frame Newton’s controversial ( and still relatively recent) theory of universal gravitation. It turns out that Voltaire wields Locke’s thought as a double-edged sword. In the Essay, Locke had devoted important chapters to the ‘ill use’ of words (in discussion of things and ideas), and also to the extent or limits of human knowledge. Voltaire implicitly uses Locke’s Essay to disentangle words qua words from things ‘as such’ throughout his discussion of Newton; but also (misleadingly) to suggest that Newton shared Locke’s ‘philosophical modesty’ concerning the limits of what is discoverable by the human mind.

For further details of the talk, please see the King’s College London webpage here:
www.kcl.ac.uk/artshums/modlangevents/eventrecords/french/2015-16/frenchressem3.aspx