[PhilPhys] 2026 Du Châtelet Prize in Philosophy of Physics: Call for Submissions

[Katherine Brading]

Submissions are invited for the 2026 Du Châtelet Prize in Philosophy of Physics<https://www.duchateletprize.org>

Topic: Newton’s Principia

Deadline: September 1, 2026

This year marks the 300th anniversary of the third edition of Newton’s Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica. To celebrate this, we invite submissions on any philosophy of physics topic arising from the Principia and its reception.
As is well known, Newton’s Principia immediately gave rise to intense philosophical debates (such as those found in The Leibniz-Clarke Correspondence), ongoing discussion, interpretation, and re-interpretation (such as in Du Châtelet, Kant, Mach, and so on), and a re-visiting of the foundations and methodologies of Newton’s theory in the wake of Einstein’s theories of relativity. Present-day Newton scholarship continues to cover a wide terrain, uncovering and examining Newton’s sources, inquiring into his metaphysics, epistemology, and methodologies, probing the conceptual foundations of his mechanics and gravitational theory, and assessing the widespread reception and influence of his work. We are pleased to welcome submissions engaging with any aspects of Newton’s Principia and/or its ongoing philosophical legacy.

The winner will receive $1000, an invitation to participate in a workshop on the topic of this year’s prize, and an invitation to have their paper considered for publication in Studies in History and Philosophy of Science. The prize is open to graduate students and to scholars within 5 years of PhD as of the submission deadline. Submissions must not exceed 10,000 words.

The deadline for submissions is September 1, 2026, (midnight GMT). For more details of the prize and of submission requirements, see below and visit the submission website<https://www.duchateletprize.org>.

The Du Châtelet Prize in Philosophy of Physics is supported by Duke University and Studies in History and Philosophy of Science.

Committee

The members of this year’s prize committee are:

  *   Zvi Biener, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Cincinnati. Zvi has published numerous papers on Newton and Newtonianism, and is co-editor with Eric Schliesser of Newton and Empiricism (Oxford University Press, 2014).
  *   Mary Domski, Professor of Philosophy, The University of New Mexico. Mary has authored multiple papers on Newton, and her book Newton’s Third Rule and the Experimental Argument for Universal Gravity was published in 2022 by Routledge.
  *   Steffen Ducheyne, Professor of Philosophy, Vrije Universiteit Brussel. Among his many publications are The Main Business of Natural Philosophy: Isaac Newton’s Natural-Philosophical Methodology (Springer, 2012) and Physics in Minerva’s Academy: Early to Mid-Eighteenth-Century Appropriations of Isaac Newton’s Natural Philosophy at the University of Leiden and in the Dutch Republic at Large, 1687–c.1750 (Brill, 2025).
  *   Andrew Janiak, Professor of Philosophy, Duke University. Author of Newton as philosopher (Cambridge University Press, 2008), editor of Newton’s Philosophical Writings (Cambridge University Press 2004, 2014), and co-editor with Eric Schliesser of Intepreting Newton: Critical Essays (Cambridge University Press, 2012), Andrew’s most recent book is The Enlightenment’s Most Dangerous Woman: Émilie Du Châtelet and the Making of Modern Philosophy (Oxford University Press, 2024).
  *   Kirsten Walsh, Senior Lecturer of Philosophy in the Department of Social and Political Sciences, Philosophy and Anthropology at the University of Exeter. Kirsten has published multiple papers on Newton’s methods including his use of hypotheses and his experimental philosophy, most recently “Definitions, Axioms and Newton’s Proofs by Experiments,” in Peter R. Anstey and David Bronstein (eds.), Definition and Essence from Aristotle to Kant (Routledge, 2025).

Workshop

A workshop honoring this year’s prize winner, and including talks by members of the committee, will be held at Duke University on Tuesday November 17, 2026. If you would like to join the mailing list to receive registration information for this workshop, please email Katherine Brading at katherine.brading at duke.edu<mailto:katherine.brading at duke.edu>.

Submission requirements


  *
Submissions must be in English
  *
Submissions must be prepared for blind review
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Submissions must be no longer than 10,000 words in length, including footnotes and references
  *
Submitted work must be unpublished and must not be under consideration for publication


The website for submissions is here<https://www.duchateletprize.org>. For more details of the submission process, and for any other questions, please contact Katherine Brading (katherine.brading at duke.edu<mailto:katherine.brading at duke.edu>).

More information about the prize

The Du Châtelet Prize in Philosophy of Physics celebrates excellence in philosophy of physics and promotes breadth across the field both historically and philosophically. Each year, a prize committee of senior scholars in the field invites submissions on a particular topic. The prize winner receives feedback and support from the committee, and the paper is considered for publication in Studies. The goals of the prize are to support young scholars working in philosophy of physics, to strengthen the historical and philosophical breadth of the field, and to promote some of the very best work being done by students and junior scholars.

Submissions are considered under blind review. Should a possible conflict of interest be recognized, committee members are recused accordingly.

2024 & 2025 No prize awarded

2023 Winner: Marta Bielinska and Caspar Jacobs “A Philosophical Introduction to Hidden Symmetries in Physics”
Topic: Laws and symmetries in the practice of physics
Committee: Elena Castellani, Nina Emery, Bas van Fraassen, Marc Lange, with input from Nancy Cartwright

2022 Winner: Ovidiu Babeș “Mixed Mathematics and Metaphysical Physics: Descartes and the Mechanics of the Flow of Water”
Topic: Descartes’s Metaphysical Physics
Committee: Roger Ariew, Dan Garber, Dana Jalobeanu, Alison Peterman, and Sophie Roux

2021 Winners: Jamee Elder “The ‘Direct Detection’ of Gravitational Waves” and Miguel Ohnesorge “Pluralizing Measurement: Physical Geodesy's Measurement Problem and its Resolution”, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 96 51-67. 2022.
Topic: Measurement practices in the physical sciences: correlation, calibration and stabilization
Committee: Alisa Bokulich, Hasok Chang, Daniel Mitchell, and Wendy Parker

2020 Winner: Joshua Eisenthal “Hertz’s Mechanics and a unitary notion of force”, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 90 226-234. 2021.
Topic: Mathematics as a tool of conceptual innovation in physical theory and/or experiment, 1780-1890.
Committee: Katherine Brading, Janet Folina, Doreen Fraser, Lydia Patton and Sheldon Smith

2019 Winner: Adwait Parker “Newton on Active and Passive Quantities of Matter”, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 84 1-11. 2020.
Topic: “How the parts of matter act on one another, as that issue stood at any time in the period 1680-1780”
Committee: Katherine Brading, Mary Domski, Andrew Janiak, Chris Smeenk, George Smith


________________________________
Dr. Katherine Brading
Professor, Department of Philosophy
Duke University
201 West Duke Building, Campus Box 90743
Durham, NC 27708
www.kbrading.org<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.kbrading.org&d=DwMFaQ&c=imBPVzF25OnBgGmVOlcsiEgHoG1i6YHLR0Sj_gZ4adc&r=m0ZD9-Pv7YCoCUZZw4M8IKVBVfmFY2ghI_J4gfp9wkM&m=p0qyU9Z7Y8jiod9KDW9zeGBHiNiVb_RTws6YBUHbYwk&s=L4qnIQcPlg4TMo03mhfB8o7Lh40GpGMFnmHFmu1-D14&e=>
https://philosophy.duke.edu

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