Natural Philosophy 185ductions to natural philosophy are arranged as conversations between a
young lady and her tutor, as in the dialogue between the fi ctional fair Eu-
phrosyne and her brother in Benjamin Martin’s The young gentleman and
lady’s philosophy (1772). These characters had real- life counterparts. Polly
Stevenson, the daughter of Benjamin Franklin’s London landlady, pre-
ferred talk to gossip. She asked Franklin for instruction. She addressed him
exactly as if she were Euphrosyne, although her letters preceded Martin’s
text by a decade. Franklin responded almost in the words of Euphrosyne’s
brother. Was it a case of life anticipating art, or art copying life? Joseph
Addison recorded a visit to a realistic- fi ctional household where the ladies
made jam while reading aloud from Fontenelle. “It was very entertaining
for me to see them dividing their speculations between jellies and stars,
and making a sudden transition from the sun to an apricot, or from the
Copernican system to the fi gure of a cheese- cake.”^32
- Physics for Place and Profit
Reputations made in the leading salons in Paris often determined the
outcome of elections to the Paris Academy of Sciences and infl uenced
the award of royal pensions. Fontenelle rose via the salon as he gained a
reputation for his dialogues and showed that he could talk well himself.
D’Alembert, mathematician, natural philosopher, and raconteur, became
the darling of the salons and the most infl uential academician in France.
No doubt Fontenelle and d’Alembert had an abiding interest in math-
ematics and natural philosophy; but they also were ambitious, cultivated
their reputations, and parleyed themselves into governors of the Republic
of Letters.^33 Many more modest citizens of the same republic likewise en-
tered the patronage system with the help of reputations for knowing more
about nature than other people did.
One of the most insistent of nature lovers on the make was the abbé
Jacques Casanova. Well educated in a seminary in Venice, he soon im-
proved on Fontenelle’s method of seducing women with philosophy and
a telescope and taught himself enough chemistry to enter aristocratic and
even royal circles where natural philosophers played with alchemy. He
traveled with a case full of philosophical instruments and projects rang-
ing from mixed mathematics (calendar reform for Catherine of Russia, a
lottery for Frederick of Prussia, surveying for lesser landholders) to applied
natural philosophy (mining, hydraulics, waterways, printing, dyeing, silk
making). He tried to develop a reputation as a mathematician by solving
the ancient problem of the doubling of the cube, which is no more im-
possible than squaring the circle. He tried to couple natural philosophy