Alembert, Jean Le Rond d'

born , Nov. 17, 1717, Paris, France

died Oct. 29, 1783, Paris

French mathematician, scientist, philosopher, and writer.

In 1743 he published a treatise on dynamics containing "d'Alembert's principle," relating to Isaac Newton's laws of motion. He developed partial differential equations and published findings of his research on integral calculus. He was associated with the Encyclopédie of Denis Diderot from с 1746 as editor of its mathematical and scientific articles; he contributed articles on music as well, and he also published treatises on acoustics. He was elected to the Académie Française in 1754.

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▪ French mathematician and philosopher

Introduction

born , Nov. 17, 1717, Paris, France

died Oct. 29, 1783, Paris

 French mathematician, philosopher, and writer, who achieved fame as a mathematician and scientist before acquiring a considerable reputation as a contributor to and editor of the famous Encyclopédie.

Early life

      The illegitimate son of a famous hostess, Mme de Tencin, and one of her lovers, the chevalier Destouches-Canon, d'Alembert was abandoned on the steps of the Parisian church of Saint-Jean-le-Rond, from which he derived his Christian name. Although Mme de Tencin never recognized her son, Destouches eventually sought out the child and entrusted him to a glazier's wife, whom d'Alembert always treated as his mother. Through his father's influence, he was admitted to a prestigious Jansenist school, enrolling first as Jean-Baptiste Daremberg and subsequently changing his name, perhaps for reasons of euphony, to d'Alembert. Although Destouches never disclosed his identity as father of the child, he left his son an annuity of 1,200 livres. D'Alembert's teachers at first hoped to train him for theology, being perhaps encouraged by a commentary he wrote on St. Paul's Letter to the Romans, but they inspired in him only a lifelong aversion to the subject. He spent two years studying law and became an advocate in 1738, although he never practiced. After taking up medicine for a year, he finally devoted himself to mathematics—“the only occupation,” he said later, “which really interested me.” Apart from some private lessons, d'Alembert was almost entirely self-taught.

Mathematics

      In 1739 he read his first paper to the Academy of Sciences, of which he became a member in 1741. In 1743, at the age of 26, he published his important Traité de dynamique, a fundamental treatise on dynamics containing the famous “ d'Alembert's principle,” which states that Newton's third law of motion (for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction) is true for bodies that are free to move as well as for bodies rigidly fixed. Other mathematical works followed very rapidly; in 1744 he applied his principle to the theory of equilibrium and motion of fluids, in his Traité de l'équilibre et du mouvement des fluides. This discovery was followed by the development of partial differential equations (partial differential equation), a branch of the theory of calculus, the first papers on which were published in his Réflexions sur la cause générale des vents (1747). It won him a prize at the Berlin Academy, to which he was elected the same year. In 1747 he applied his new calculus to the problem of vibrating strings, in his Recherches sur les cordes vibrantes; in 1749 he furnished a method of applying his principles to the motion of any body of a given shape; and in 1749 he found an explanation of the precession of the equinoxes (equinoxes, precession of the) (a gradual change in the position of the Earth's orbit), determined its characteristics, and explained the phenomenon of the nutation (nodding) of the Earth's axis, in Recherches sur la précession des équinoxes et sur la nutation de l'axe de la terre. In 1752 he published Essai d'une nouvelle théorie de la résistance des fluides, an essay containing various original ideas and new observations. In it he considered air as an incompressible elastic fluid composed of small particles and, carrying over from the principles of solid body mechanics the view that resistance is related to loss of momentum on impact of moving bodies, he produced the surprising result that the resistance of the particles was zero. D'Alembert was himself dissatisfied with the result; the conclusion is known as “d'Alembert's paradox” and is not accepted by modern physicists. In the Memoirs of the Berlin Academy he published findings of his research on integral calculus—which devises relationships of variables by means of rates of change of their numerical value—a branch of mathematical science that is greatly indebted to him. In his Recherches sur différents points importants du système du monde (1754–56) he perfected the solution of the problem of the perturbations (variations of orbit) of the planets that he had presented to the academy some years before. From 1761 to 1780 he published eight volumes of his Opuscules mathématiques.

The Encyclopédie

      Meanwhile, d'Alembert began an active social life and frequented well-known salons, where he acquired a considerable reputation as a witty conversationalist and mimic. Like his fellow Philosophes (philosophe)—those thinkers, writers, and scientists who believed in the sovereignty of reason and nature (as opposed to authority and revelation) and rebelled against old dogmas and institutions—he turned to the improvement of society. A rationalist thinker in the free-thinking tradition, he opposed religion and stood for tolerance and free discussion; in politics the Philosophes sought a liberal monarchy with an “enlightened” king who would supplant the old aristocracy with a new, intellectual aristocracy. Believing in man's need to rely on his own powers, they promulgated a new social morality to replace Christian ethics. Science, the only real source of knowledge, had to be popularized for the benefit of the people, and it was in this tradition that he became associated with the Encyclopédie about 1746. When the original idea of a translation into French of Ephraim Chambers' English Cyclopædia was replaced by that of a new work under the general editorship of the Philosophe Denis Diderot, d'Alembert was made editor of the mathematical and scientific articles. In fact, he not only helped with the general editorship and contributed articles on other subjects but also tried to secure support for the enterprise in influential circles. He wrote the Discours préliminaire that introduced the first volume of the work in 1751. This was a remarkable attempt to present a unified view of contemporary knowledge, tracing the development and interrelationship of its various branches and showing how they formed coherent parts of a single structure; the second section of the Discours was devoted to the intellectual history of Europe from the time of the Renaissance. In 1752 d'Alembert wrote a preface to Volume III, which was a vigorous rejoinder to the Encyclopédie's critics, while an Éloge de Montesquieu, which served as the preface to Volume V (1755), skillfully but somewhat disingenuously presented Montesquieu (Montesquieu, Charles-Louis de Secondat, baron de La Brède et de) as one of the Encyclopédie's supporters. Montesquieu had, in fact, refused an invitation to write the articles “Democracy” and “Despotism,” and the promised article on “Taste” remained unfinished at his death in 1755.

      In 1756 d'Alembert went to stay with Voltaire at Geneva, where he also collected information for an Encyclopédie article, “Genève,” which praised the doctrines and practices of the Genevan pastors. When it appeared in 1757, it aroused angry protests in Geneva because it affirmed that many of the ministers no longer believed in Christ's divinity and also advocated (probably at Voltaire's instigation) the establishment of a theatre. This article prompted Rousseau (Rousseau, Jean-Jacques), who had contributed the articles on music to the Encyclopédie, to argue in his Lettre à d'Alembert sur les spectacles (1758) that the theatre is invariably a corrupting influence. D'Alembert himself replied with an incisive but not unfriendly Lettre à J.-J. Rousseau, citoyen de Genève. Gradually discouraged by the growing difficulties of the enterprise, d'Alembert gave up his share of the editorship at the beginning of 1758, thereafter limiting his commitment to the production of mathematical and scientific articles.

Later literary, scientific, and philosophical work

      His earlier literary and philosophical activity, however, led to the publication of his Mélanges de littérature, d'histoire et de philosophie (1753). This work contained the impressive Essai sur les gens de lettres, which exhorted writers to pursue “liberty, truth and poverty” and also urged aristocratic patrons to respect the talents and independence of such writers.

      Largely as a result of the persistent campaigning of Mme du Deffand, a prominent hostess to writers and scientists, d'Alembert was elected to the French Academy in 1754; he proved himself to be a zealous member, working hard to enhance the dignity of the institution in the eyes of the public and striving steadfastly for the election of members sympathetic to the cause of the Philosophes. His personal position became even more influential in 1772 when he was made permanent secretary. One of his functions was the continuation of the Histoire des membres de l'Académie; this involved writing the biographies of all the members who had died between 1700 and 1772. He paid tribute to his predecessors by means of Éloges that were delivered at public sessions of the academy. Though of limited literary value, they throw interesting light on his attitude toward many contemporary problems and also reveal his desire to establish a link between the Academy and the public.

      From 1752 onward, Frederick II of Prussia repeatedly tried to persuade d'Alembert to become president of the Berlin Academy, but the philosopher contented himself with a brief visit to the King at the Rhine village of Wesel in 1755 and a longer stay at Potsdam in 1763. For many years he gave the King advice on the running of the academy and the appointment of new members. In 1762 another monarch, the empress Catherine II of Russia, invited d'Alembert to become tutor to her son, the grand duke Paul; this offer also was refused. Apart from fearing the harmful effects of foreign residence upon his health and personal position, d'Alembert did not wish to be separated from the intellectual life of Paris.

      Although as a skeptic, d'Alembert willingly supported the Philosophes' hostility to Christianity, he was too cautious to become openly aggressive. The expulsion of the Jesuits from France, however, prompted him to publish “by a disinterested author,” at first anonymously, and then in his own name, Sur la destruction des Jésuites en France (1765; An Account of the Destruction of the Jesuits in France, 1766). He there tried to show that the Jesuits, in spite of their qualities as scholars and educators, had destroyed themselves through their inordinate love of power.

      During these years d'Alembert's interests included musical theory. His Éléments de musique of 1752 was an attempt to expound the principles of the composer Jean-Philippe Rameau (Rameau, Jean-Philippe) (1683–1764), who had consolidated contemporary musical development into a harmonic system that dominated Western music until about 1900. In 1754 d'Alembert published an essay expressing his thoughts on music in general—and French music in particular—entitled Réflexions sur la musique en général et sur la musique française en particulier. He also published in his mathematical opuscules treatises on acoustics, the physics of sound, and he contributed several articles on music to the Encyclopédie. In 1765 a serious illness compelled him to leave his foster-mother's house, and he eventually went to live in the house of Julie de Lespinasse (Lespinasse, Julie de), with whom he fell in love. He was the leading intellectual figure in her salon, which became an important recruiting centre for the French Academy. Although they may have been intimate for a short time, d'Alembert soon had to be satisfied with the role of steadfast friend. He discovered the extent of her passionate involvement with other men only after Julie's death in 1776. He transferred his home to an apartment at the Louvre—to which he was entitled as secretary to the Academy—where he died.

Assessment

      Posterity has not confirmed the judgment of those contemporaries who placed d'Alembert's reputation next to Voltaire's. In spite of his original contributions to the mathematical sciences, intellectual timidity prevented his literary and philosophical work from attaining true greatness. Nevertheless, his scientific background enabled him to elaborate a philosophy of science that, inspired by the rationalist ideal of the ultimate unity of all knowledge, established “principles” making possible the interconnection of the various branches of science. Moreover, d'Alembert was a typical 18th-century Philosophe, for in both his life and his work he tried to invest the name with dignity and serious meaning. In his personal life he was simple and frugal, never seeking wealth and dispensing charity whenever possible, always watchful of his integrity and independence, and constantly using his influence, both at home and abroad, to encourage the advance of “enlightenment.”

Ronald Grimsley

Additional Reading

The main editions of d'Alembert's collected works are: Oeuvres philosophiques, historiques et littéraires de d'Alembert, ed. by J.F. Bastien, 18 vol. (1805); and Oeuvres complètes de d'Alembert, ed. by Bossange and Belin, 5 vol. (1821, reprinted 1967). These may be supplemented by d'Alembert's Mélanges de littérature, d'histoire et de philosophie, 2 vol. (1753), 4 vol. (1759), 5th vol. (1767), which contain a few pieces omitted from the collected editions; and his Histoire des membres de l'Académie française morts depuis 1700 jusqu'en 1771, 6 vol. (1785–87, reprinted 1970). General studies are: Joseph Bertrand, D'Alembert (1889); and Ronald Grimsley, Jean d'Alembert, 1717–83 (1963).

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