Publications
- Veldman, M. (2024) ‘Mathematizing Metaphysics: The Case of the Principle of Least Action’, Philosophy of Science, 91(2), pp. 351–369. [PhilSci Archive preprint] [DOI] [Short synopsis]
- Veldman, M. (forthcoming) ‘Du Châtelet’s Metaphysics of Science and the Dissertation on fire’. In The Handbook of Émilie Du Châtelet. Bloomsbury. [Short synopsis]
- Veldman, M. (forthcoming) ‘Casting a Light on Du Châtelet’s Dissertation on fire’. In Dynamics and Reason: Du Chatelet and Kant. Springer. [Short synopsis]
In preparation
- “Leonhard Euler.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
- Scheduled to appear in early 2026.
- “The mathematics of metaphysics: formalist reasoning, its history, and its grounds”
- “Evidence, scientific knowledge, and hypothetico-deductivism in Du Châtelet”
- “Euler on Wolff and the Metaphysics-Physics Relation”
- “On Euler’s Dilemma for the Monadology”
My research program
As a historian of philosophy, I’m interested in the relationship between metaphysics and physics during the Enlightenment. A century after Newton and Leibniz, this was a central preoccupation of the critical-period Kant. And between them, two of the figures most important to this question were Leonhard Euler and Émilie Du Châtelet.
As a philosopher of science, I’m interested in the methodology and epistemology of science and the conceptual basis of mechanics. After Newton and Leibniz, one of the most influential writers on methodology and hypotheses was Émilie Du Châtelet. Further, the most important concepts in mechanics were of force and matter – physics’ answer to cause and substance – and by far the most important figure working on them was Euler.
Yet, no philosopher has written on Euler at length, despite the fact that, on central philosophical issues of the Enlightenment, he was the most important figure working in the century between Newton (Principia, 1687) and the critical-period Kant (First Critique, 1781). My work aims to reveal how he indelibly shaped the metaphysics, epistemology, and the foundations of Enlightenment science. As for Du Châtelet, while a new scholarship has flowered in recent years, I aim to broaden its scope by looking at a major, neglected text of hers, the Dissertation on the nature and propagation of fire, which I believe points to a need to rethink aspects of her philosophical evolution currently taken for granted in the literature.
Moving into contemporary philosophy: I am interested in tracking early-modern debates and assumptions about metaphysics, science, and methodology to the present. One of these assumptions is the metaphysical validity of formal, mathematical reasoning (of the type I find emerges in the mid-18th century) in contemporary metaphysics of science. Another throughline to the present is “hypothetico-deductive” method and “confirmation theory” thinking in philosophy of science. I read Du Châtelet as pointing towards an alternative conception of evidence that has been under-appreciated, only recently gaining recognition thanks to the work of George Smith, the philosopher and Newton scholar.
A description of my post-doc research can be found on the ENN project website.
Portrait of Leonhard Euler, 1753, Jakob Emanuel Handmann. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Portrait of Du Chatelet, 1750, by Maurice Quentin de la Tour. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
Translating Du Chatelet
The recent revival of interest in Emilie Du Châtelet has been supported by up-to-date translations of her Foundations of Physics, which Katherine Brading has made available at her website.
Currently, I am finalizing my translation of her Dissertation sur la nature et la propagation du feu, with an introduction for readers. This translation will incorporate both the 1739 and 1744 versions of the text to help us understand the transformation Du Châtelet’s thinking underwent in the early 1740s. My thanks to Ashton Green for allowing me to consult her own draft translation for this project.
My translation is tentatively planned to appear on her Project Vox webpage, alongside the other translations of her works there. And it has been the basis of several additional scholarly papers, both forthcoming and in progress. I expect to post preprints of these papers soon.
In the meantime: a short synopsis and description of these projects.