Page 95 - Federico Focher (a cura di), PIERRE-LOUIS MOREAU DE MAUPERTUIS Lettere filosofiche e scientifiche

Scientific Letters. Letter on the Progress of Sciences

Edited by Federico Focher

Abstract
The Lettres de M. de Maupertuis, here proposed in their Italian translation of XVIII
century (original title: Lettere filosofiche del sig. di Maupertuis, Venezia 1760), were
published in Dresden in 1752. The work consists of a collection of short scientific and
philosophical letters in which the author, then President of the Academy of Sciences of
Berlin, critically presents the state of art of physics and natural history in the first half
of XVIII century. In the last letter, the famous Lettre sur le progrès des sciences
(considered one of the most interesting texts of middle ’700), Maupertuis proposes
innovative, and sometimes imaginative research programs to be supported by
government funds. The Lettres arised the shortsighted irony of Voltaire, probably
envious of the success of Maupertuis at the court of Potsdam, which led to the rupture
of relations between the two French students. The medical-biological letters are
particularly interesting, because of their modernity and knowingness. Among them,
there is the often cited Letter on the generation of animals, in which Maupertuis,
“evoluzionist” ante litteram, gives his support to the epigenetic theory, through a
pioneering “genetic” study conducted on a family of Berlin, thus disproving the
preformationism (ovist or animalculist) then prevailing.

Federico Focher, Director of Research at the Institute of Molecular Genetics, CNR-
Pavia, is professor of History of Biology at the University of Pavia. He was Post-doctoral
fellow and Visiting scientist at the University of Zürich and at the Massachusetts Medical
School (Worcester, MA). Coauthor of more than ninety papers in international scientific
journals, he also published several papers and four books on History of Biology
(publishers: Bollati Boringhieri, Il prato, Ibis).

E-mail: focher@igm.cnr.it