Émilie Du Châtelet and the Possibility of Science

It has recently been argued that Du Châtelet assigns the Principle of Sufficient Reason a role that commits her not only to the claim that every contingent, natural fact has a sufficient reason, but also to the claim that every such reason is, in principle, knowable by finite minds. This chapter takes this interpretation seriously and asks what, on Du Châtelet’s view, could explain this striking correspondence between the explanatory structure of the natural world and the epistemic reach of finite minds. After considering and rejecting several candidate explanations, I argue that Du Châtelet’s commitment is best understood as a condition on the possibility of hypothesis-based inquiry. Unless natural sufficient reasons are in principle knowable by finite minds, Du Châtelet faces a radical skepticism about such inquiry: we can never rule out a hypothesis on the grounds that no sufficient reason can be found for a claim it entails.