Descartes, Fontenelle and Other Cartesians: Multiple Worlds from Vortex Power

Abstract

We shall totally exclude from our Philosophy the search for final causes, since we should not presume so much about ourselves as to believe that God was bound to make us privy to His councils…

Appendices

Appendix 1: Non-Cartesians

Descartes and his followers had not been the only thinkers to introduce and develop Plurality through the seventeenth century, since universal speculation had started right after the landing of Sidereus Nuncius. However, from now on, the theme becomes literary more than scientific, thus it will be but briefly mentioned here; admittedly, Fontenelle’s case was on the borderline. Still, it proves fascinating and has been very well followed in the writings of Marjorie Hope Nicolson; to mention just a few of her studies: The Telescope and Imagination (Nicolson 1935), Kepler’s Somnium and John Donne, Cosmic Voyages, Early Space Travellers, and Voyages to the Moon. There is also a very-readable account in Mac Colley (1936). Here we merely quote the “New Discourse proving the Plurality” from these two historians and stick to just a few titles.

In France, thirty years before Fontenelle, Pierre Borel, Conseiller et Médecin ordinaire du Roy, had already presented his Discours Nouveau

of Worlds, that Celestial Bodies are inhabited Earths, that the Earth is a Star, that it is out of the centre of the world in the third Heaven and revolves in front of the fixed Sun, & other most-curious things.” (Borel 1657).

While referring to the latest astronomical discoveries, the small book also presents in favour of Plurality many proofs rather unexpectedly taken from Scripture or ancient writers and philosophers: “an argument taken from the location of Hell… from the celestial and Earthly paradises…from the answers of demons.” Altogether, only the title anticipates Fontenelle, not the spirit nor substance, and the text does not have much literary merit either. The same cannot be said of the Cyrano de Bergerac 1650 novel L’autre Monde ou Les États et Empires de la Lune et du Soleil (The other world or States and Empires of the Moon and Sun), still read in French schools, although less commonly than the Entretiens. Cyrano’s travels to the Moon are pure fancy, closer to Lucian’s True Story than to Plutarch’s De Facie or to Kepler’s Somnium; they do illustrate themes made fashionable by the telescope, but their cosmological content is negligible. In England, Robert Burton in his rambling Anatomy of Melancholy (Burton 1624), written in 1621, had opposed Plurality; so did Bishop John Wilkins, founder of the Royal Society, nevertheless admitting the Moon to be an Earth, and even writing of a Discovery of a World in the Moone (Wilkins 1638). Henry More, in the poem Democritus Platonissans (More 1646), adopted multiple Copernican solar systems; Henry Power in his Experimental Philosophy (Power 1664), did the same and referred to “the Noble and Elastic Soul of Descartes” as originator of the concept. And Joseph Addison (Addison 1837), in 1712 lauded Descartes who “scorned to be longer bounded within the straights and crystalline walls of an Aristotelian world; no, his delight is to search the regions above, to discover new suns, and new worlds, which lay hid among the stars…” (Quotations by Mac Colley 1936, 425).

During the eighteenth century, extra-terrestrial life is taken for granted, and the theme becomes a mere tool for introducing whatever fancy the author has in mind. The best remembered essays are those of the two great humorists, Jonathan Swift and Voltaire. Swift (1724) in his Voyage to Laputa… takes Captain Lemuel Gulliver to an “island in the air” which is not quite the Moon, even if some astronomical references are given in the story; all the interest lies in local beliefs and customs. As to Voltaire, his giant comet-hopping Micromégas (Voltaire 1752) humbled men in size, but not human astronomers in wisdom; the scientific content of the tale is far more precise than the one displayed by Swift. On the way, the author manages to mock poor Fontenelle, obvious model for the Saturnian Academy Secretary, who “had truly never invented anything, but gave good accounts of the inventions of others, and made passable little verses and great computations.” Some time before, Voltaire and his intimate friend the Marquise du Châtelet had been responsible for introducing Newton to the French readers, still largely Cartesian at the time.

Even theatre goers were not spared. In 1697, one Elkanah Settle gave in London The World in the Moon, an Opera, for which the stage machinery must have been not far second to NASA’s:

three great Arches of Clouds…with a prospect of Cloud-Work… a circular part of the black Clouds rolls softly away, and gradually discovers a Silver Moon, near Fourteen Foot Diameter; After which the Silver Moon wanes off by degrees and discovers the World within… a large Landscape of Woods, Waters, Towns etc… (Quoted by Nicolson 1948, p. 47).

Somewhat less forgotten is Joseph Haydn’s opera Il Mondo della Luna from a century later; happily, winds no more than strings were in the least bothered by the lack of lunar atmosphere.

Appendix 2: Molière on Cartesian Astronomy

Here are some extracts of Molière’s Les Femmes Sçavantes (1672) Act IV, Scene 3:

Trissotin: Je viens vous annoncer une grande nouvelle.

Nous l’avons en dormant, Madame, échappé belle

Un Monde près de nous est passé tout du long,

Et chu tout au travers de notre tourbillon;

Et, s’il eût en chemin rencontré notre terre,

Elle eut été brisée en morceaux comme verre.

Translation by R.Wilbur, Harcourt Brace Jovanovitch, NY, London, 1978:

I bring you, Madam, some startling news I’ve heard:

Last night a near catastrophe occurred:

While we were all asleep, a comet crossed

Our vortex, and the Earth was all but lost;

Had it collided with the world, alas,

We’d have been shattered into bits like glass.

The play contains other verses attesting Descartes’ drawing-room popularity, not unlike Einstein’s in the nineteen-twenties. Act III, Scene 2:

Bélise: Je m’accommode assez, pour moi des petits corps;

Mais le vide à souffrir me semble difficile

Et je goûte bien mieux la matière subtile.

Trissotin: Descartes, pour l’aimant, donne fort dans mon sens.

Armande: J’aime ses tourbillons.

Philaminte: Moi, ses mondes tombants.

Translation:

B. I rather like his atoms, but as between

A vacuum and a field of subtle matter

I find it easier to accept the latter.

Tr. On magnetism, Descartes supports my notions.

A. I love his whirling motions.

Ph. And me, his falling worlds.

Next, the conversation proceeds to the topical subject of the recent telescopic discoveries:

Philaminte: Pour moi, sans me flatter, j’en ai déjà fait une

Et j’ai vu clairement des hommes dans la lune.

Bélise: Je n’ai point encor vu d’hommes, comme je crois;

Mais j’ai vu des clochers tout comme je vous vois.

Translation:

Ph. I can already offer one such rarity:

I have seen men in the moon, with perfect clarity.

B. I’m not sure I have seen men, but I can say

That I’ve seen steeples there, as plain as day.

The first representation of the play took place at the Palais Royal on March 11 1672, and among the early spectators was Christiaan Huygens who wrote to his brother Lodewijk that “on l’a trouvée fort plaisante, mais un peu trop sçavante.” (It was found much pleasing, but somewhat too learned; OCCH, VIII, 161).