The Lapland‐expedition of Maupertuis and his group of young academics is known as one of the most decisive and most impressive experimental determinations of the figure of the earth which will be obviously discussed against the background of the fundamental antagonism of 18th century philosophy,i.e.the struggle of Cartesianism against Newtonianism andvice versa.Following such an interpretation, the historian is only interested in one aspect of the voyage. Nevertheless, there are other ones which, taken into account, modify the inherited perspective on the expedition enormously. In this paper the experimental proof of the Newtonian theory as well as the ethnographic observations, the investigation of the inscriptions from Windso etc. will be studied. The argumentation tries to give an explication of the Lapland‐expedition as a whole and develops it in comparison with Leibniz' grand tour to Southern Germany, Austria and Italy. Its dominating point is to stress that the new dimensions of scientific voyages in the 18th century are to be understood as elements of a new philosophical paradigm,i. e.an all‐embracing historical world