Uneasy Genius: The Life and Work of Pierre Duhem.

Abstract

1. Young Pierre.- Parents, home and early years.- Eyewitness to a fateful year.- College Stanislas.- Life at Stanislas.- Young scholar.- Personal exploits.- Teachers remembered.- Ready for the grandes ecoles.- 2. The Normalien.- A far cry from 'normal' school.- Cacique general.- An ill-fated thesis.- Anticlericals versus Catholics.- Sailing on waters and events.- Under Pasteur's eyes.- Young man in pursuit of rigor.- 3. Lecturer in Lille.- Citadel against citadel.- Encomiums from officialdom.- A brilliant doctorate.- Students in awe.- A vibrant faculty group.- Portrait of a mind.- Politics: ordinary and academic.- Married and widowed.- Comforts and frustrations of science.- Crushing weight of stacked cards.- 4. In Transit in Rennes.- A not so somnolent town.- Frustrated teacher.- Creating a stir.- In the center of a debate.- Scholar in a wrong place.- 5. Bordeaux: A Road to Paris?.- From home to university.- A chair and a department.- A string of doctorates and their perspective.- A great first ignored.- Prodigious productivity and a recognition.- Life at home.- Avid hiker.- A chair and its political prize.- A small speech as a big crime.- In a clash for a sacred cause.- 6. Bordeaux: Journey's En.- A companionable solitary.- Intransigent integrity.- Twice bereaved.- Relentless work and growing recognition.- A drawn-out election.- A student forever.- Waging his war to the end.- 7. In Memoriam.- Din of war and summer lull.- Bordeaux remembers.- The first anniversary.- Postwar reminiscences.- Some noble efforts.- Missed anniversaries.- Illustrations.- 8. Duhem the Physicist.- The making of a physicist.- The physicist as seen by himself.- The physicist and his peers.- A narrowing advance.- The physicist and posterity.- 9. Duhem the Philosopher.- Common sense with a realist touch.- Attitude to metaphysics.- Rigor as strength and weakness.- Philosophy through history.- Philosopher on trial.- The Theorie physique.- Critics of the Theorie physique.- Christian positivism.- French philosophers.- American dissertations.- The crux of the matter.- 10. Duhem the Historian.- A special historian.- To unsuspected headwaters.- Continuity through Leonardo.- The source of continuous growth.- Scholarship as apologetics.- The quest for completeness.- A gamut of reactions.- Attitudes toward a new vision.- The Renaissance threatened.- Posthumous volumes.- An age in the middle.- List of Duhem's Publications.- Index of Names.- Index of Subjects.

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