Stevin Seminar: From Here to Eternity: the Emergence of Order in 18th Century Celestial Mechanics

Lecturer: Massimiliano Badino

Abstract: Very few episodes in the history of science enjoy a narrative as straightforward and established as the proof of the stability of the solar system. According to this narrative the problem rose with Newton and was solved by Laplace in the early 1770s (or, alternatively, in the mid-1780s). In this talk I will challenge this narrative in this entirety. I will show how the proof of stability derived from the deep interplay between culture and mathematical practices..

Massimiliano Badino is Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellow at the MIT and at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona.