How did French scientist Pierre Louis Moreau de Maupertuis' experiences illustrate the bigger picture of changes in European thought in the eighteenth century?

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

A. Maupertuis' experiences
1. mental pilgrimage between certainty and doubt
a. was engaged in the most elaborate and expensive scientific
experiment ever conducted up to that time
b. argued that the earth must be distended at the equator and
flattened at the poles
c. took an expedition to prove theories and get data
d. helped to convince the world that the planet was indeed shaped as
Newton had predicted
2. science and speculation
a. Maupertuis eventually became disillusioned by science but inspired
by nature
b. set off believing that every truth was quantifiable and that every
fact could be sensed
3. rationalism and religious revelation
a. time of his death in 1759, he had become something of a mystic
b. wanted to find a way to learn what lay beyond the universe