Abstract
Having completed our reconstruction of the trajectory of the young Descartes, from physico-mathematician, in 1619, to systematic mechanistic natural philosopher, in 1633, one more step is required to round off our inquiry. His Principia Philosophiae contains the mature statement of his system of natural philosophy. Therefore, our study of how Descartes matured as a natural philosopher can only be properly closed through an analysis of the Principia and comparison of it to Le Monde. The present Chapter explicates previously little noticed, but daring and masterful new moves in pro-Copernican systematization that Descartes executed in the Principia. Descartes’ systematizing strategy focused upon weaving ranges of novel matters of fact—concerning sunspots, novae and variable stars, and the structure and formation of all planets—into explanatory and descriptive ‘cosmographic’ narratives with cosmic sweep and radical realist Copernican intent. It is this vast system–binding gambit of Descartes, entraining the use and reframing of key, available matters of fact—in turn leveraged into explanatory resources within the system—that best characterises the natural philosophical difference between Le Monde and the Principia.
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Notes
- 1.
‘Novel’ in this context does not necessarily mean newly adduced by the author in question. In the natural philosophical contest of the generation of Descartes, novel factual claims by others were routinely co-opted and reframed within one’s own philosophy of nature. To be up to date in this style of work did not demand production of fresh claims about matters of fact. These rules of the game were to change considerably amongst the next generation of natural philosophers. (On this issue see also Sect. 2.5.2 above.) Descartes does not mention magnetism or sunspots in Le Monde. However, he alludes to novae ever so briefly. See above Sect. 10.8, note 96 and text thereto.
- 2.
Biro (2009, 2006). Brody’s monograph is The Enigma of Sunspots: A Story of Discovery and Scientific Revolution (2002). Brody then began a study of the Principles, interweaving its matter theoretical differences from Le Monde with her prior research on sun spots and variable stars. Consultations about this project led to our decision in mid 2009 to collaborate on what became by August 2011 a 14,000 word paper, Schuster and Brody, ‘Descartes and Sunspots: Matters of Fact and Systematizing Strategies in the Principia Philosophiae’, accepted for publication in early 2013 by Annals of Science, and published on line March 2012: DOI: 10.1080/00033790.2012.669703
- 3.
Note also that when we discussed cosmogony in Le Monde in Chap. 9, we were mainly concerned with understanding Descartes’ fabular narrative in general, as part of unfolding the text in order. We were not concerned with cosmogony in detail, let alone with comparing how Descartes’ cosmogony compares in the two treatises.
- 4.
As we shall see in Sect. 12.3, this statement is not quite correct in the case of the Principles, where the third element does not appear during the cosmogony, but only during the actual cosmological steady state.
- 5.
- 6.
In Sect. 12.10 we shall see that the formation of planetary (Earth-like) structures is a necessary result of natural processes, given the contingent death of a star and its migration into/capture by a neighboring vortex. That the planet forming process is necessary has tended to lead commentators to conflate Descartes’ Earth theory with his cosmogony. But his history of the Earth (or any planet) is not cosmogonical, rather a necessary process triggered by random events inside his dynamic, steady state cosmos. Indeed it may be said that Descartes’ dynamic steady state cosmology resides entirely outside the purview, or implications, of his little cosmogonical story.
- 7.
In an unusually prescient comment McRae (1991, 159) noted that in Descartes’ natural philosophy, ‘If it is the relation of the fixed stars to one another which constitutes the form of the world, then…the universe does, according to Descartes, have a history of change from one world to another world as a result of the growth of sunspots and the death of stars’. This remark foreshadows the entire thrust of the argument in this chapter, although, as indicated in note 6, we do not quite attribute ‘world-making and world-breaking’ significance to the behavior of variable stars or births of planets as treated by Descartes in the Principles.
- 8.
Biro (2009) 8–9. Cosmography is defined by Biro, extrapolating from definitions by John Dee, Thomas Blundeville, Nathanial Carpenter and William Barlow, as ‘that part of natural philosophy that provided within one explanatory framework the relationship between the heavens and earth’, or as John Dee said, ‘matcheth Heaven and the Earth in one frame’. Such early modern definitions usually say that cosmography requires the use of astronomy, geography and other disciplines. This demands some clarification. First of all, references to astronomy in this connection clearly are mistaken, if we are considering astronomy to be the mixed mathematical discipline devoted to construction of geometrical models of planetary motions. Cosmography was a domain within the field of natural philosophy, hence it is not astronomy that is being related to theorizing about the Earth but rather that dimension of natural philosophy dealing with structure, matter and cause in the cosmos, to wit, cosmology as we have termed it above. As to the other term in the relation, loosely called geography above, one has to recognize that geography had many acceptations in the period, mirrored today by historians of the field (Biro, ibid., 12, note 19 thereto, discussing the views of Lesley Cormack and David Livingstone). The portion of geography considered to be part of cosmography might be taken to be mathematical geography. But there are difficulties here, as part of what was meant by mathematical geography was just that, a mixed or practical mathematical field with at best highly debatable relevances for natural philosophy and cosmology. In addition, the other parts of mathematical geography—such as the study of terrestrial gravity and magnetism, the study of exact locations, and deep articulations to cartography—constituted a diffuse and only partially natural philosophically relevant suite of concerns. Given all this, Biro adopted a contemporary term ‘geognosy’ in order to construct an historian’s category of ‘geognosic opinion’ to serve as the ‘Earthly’ partner to cosmology in the cosmography pairing. Geognosic opinion would then be ‘ideas and knowledge about the Earth’s structure’; that is, geognosic knowledge claims concerned issues of structure, matter and cause in regard to the Earth. (Biro, ibid., 16 and note 27 thereto) Within natural philosophical discourse this is to be paired, cosmographically, with cosmology as claims about structure, matter and cause in the cosmos. (In this chapter I simply denote the ‘Earth’ part of the heavens/Earth pairing as ‘theory of the structure and nature of the earth’. Hence, for our purposes here, cosmography is that dimension of natural philosophizing in which cosmological and Earth theory claims were placed in relation to each other.)
- 9.
In other words, What is the nature of the Earth as a planet? What can be gathered about the Earth, for example, about its structure, its magnetism (Gilbert), its tides (Galileo and Descartes), the nature of local fall, that would support its construal as a planet amongst planets and allow for the motions realist Copernicanism required of it? For realist Copernicans the relation of ‘the Earth’ to everything else, that is, ‘the heavens’, changed, becoming the relation of any and all planets, their structures and geneses, to any and all stars, their nature and developmental patterns. Biro (note 8) has shown that claims about the structure of the Earth could now be exploited cosmographically, for realist Copernican ends: Early to mid sixteenth century technical developments in geography, consequent upon the re-discovery of Ptolemy’s Geography and leavened by the findings of the voyages of discovery, were at first only grudgingly granted by the Scholastic Aristotelians, but were eagerly seized as a resource by natural philosophers advocating Copernican cosmology, with Galileo and Descartes offering late examples of such cosmographically focused tactics in a sequence of varied yet uniformly anti-Aristotelian natural philosophical gambits stretching from Copernicus himself, through Bruno, Gilbert and others. We further articulate Biro’s initiative in our discussion below in Sect. 12.11 of the nature of Descartes’ ‘grand cosmographical gambit’ in the Principles.
- 10.
An example of the presence of a definite cosmographical orientation in Le Monde occurs when Descartes offers his first account of the elements, in Chap. 5 (AT XI 24–6; MSM 37–39; SG 17–18), a text we discussed in detail in Sect. 9.3, at note 42. In this passage, Descartes identifies his three elements with Aristotelian traditional ones: first element with fire; second element with air and third element with earth. It is a commentators’ commonplace that Descartes was attempting here to preserve some continuity with (at least part of) traditional element theory. In Le Monde, as some suggest, he may have viewed his ‘naming’ his elements as yet another rhetorical ploy to keep the intended francophone honnête homme reader on side. But, his gambit would have arguably been quite unconvincing to just about any natural philosophically literate reader. Moreover, if that was part of Descartes’ aim, it certainly seems he did not stick with it, dropping the pretense in the Principles. Not previously noticed, however, is a deeper motive, one grounded in systematizing tactics: This naming of the elements seems to have cosmographical significance in the sense we have given to the term. In this new system, neither air nor fire are elements found on and about a unique Earth. In the light of his radical Copernican realism, envisioning effectively an infinite number of star and planetary vortical systems, Descartes was saying to the aware reader that ‘air’ had been misconstrued by Aristotelians as the essential constituent of the local terrestrial atmosphere only. No, ‘air’ is ubiquitous in the cosmos, constituted of the spherical boules of second element that make up each and every stellar vortex. What natural philosophers have termed air is just a mixture of various kinds of earthy particles of third element, with the usual unavoidable interstitial ‘filler’ material of fugitive second and first element particles. Similarly ‘fire’ is not the Aristotelian element at home in some peculiar sense just below the Earth’s moon. Again, no, for fire is the first element, the very stuff of every star, including our sun. Renaming the elements was less an unconvincing bow to traditional teaching than it was—as we have foreshadowed—a hint and sign of a new cosmography; that is, a new relation between all planets, in any vortex whatsoever, including our Earth, and all the stars and stellar vortices of the universe. If we are correct about this, we have here a nice example of Descartes’ well known proclivities toward both elusiveness and allusiveness, in his simultaneous (and contradictory) appeal to the old element names and new cosmographical tactics. In any case, as this chapter argues, the Principles will display a much greater attention to cosmographical strategies and content.
- 11.
Love (1975) 127–37; Lynes (1982). At that time Lynes remarked (p.55) that explaining the development of Descartes’ matter theory between Le Monde and the Principia had been a ‘somewhat neglected task’. Love did not directly compare the matter theories of Le Monde and the Principles, but rather juxtaposed Descartes’ implied matter theory in his Essais of 1637 to that of the Principles, as it were imputing the former to Le Monde, often in an erroneous sense it must be said. The particular problems raised by Love’s manner of interpreting Le Monde are not the topic of the current chapter, but further comment on Love, and Lynes, appears below at Note 25. By ‘matter theory’ I mean Descartes’ theories of the elements, or genres of micro-particles into which his matter-extension is taken to be divided in Le Monde and later in the Principia Philosophiae. Strictly, and most abstractly speaking, Descartes’ theory of matter consists in his doctrine of matter-extension. However, that concept, taken in isolation, plays almost no role in the descriptions and explanations he offers in the working machinery of his natural philosophy, and it is these, rather than abstract doctrines on the metaphysical level with which we are concerned. Accordingly, throughout this chapter as we discuss Descartes’ accounts of cosmology, cosmogony, magnetism, sun spots, variable stars, novae and the generation of planets, we indifferently label our object of study the ‘matter theory’ or ‘element theory’ of Descartes—or sometimes his ‘matter and element theory’. It is worth recalling, in this regard, the sage words of T.S. Kuhn, discussing the inner workings of Cartesian natural philosophy in his Copernican Revolution: ‘…Descartes introduced a concept which since the seventeenth century has greatly obscured the corpuscular basis of his science and cosmology. He made the universe full. But the matter that filled Cartesian space was everywhere particulate in structure.’ Kuhn (1959) 240.
- 12.
It has not always been the case that the matter theoretical contrasts between Le Monde and the Principia have been glossed over. Gabriel Daniel (1649–1728) for instance, who was a strong critic of Descartes, was not sure which of the two versions to accept: ‘whether the third element be contemporary with the other two, as M. Descartes seems in some measure to suppose in his Treatise of Light: or, whether it be form’d by the Conjunction of several Parts of the first element hook’d to one another, as he seems to teach in the Book of Principles’. Daniel (1692) 261.
- 13.
AT XI, pp.29–30; SG p. 20; MSM 45–7. It is, however, true that if by matter theory in Descartes, we were to mean solely the theory of matter-extension, then, of course, a unity of heavens and Earth was achieved from the start, and in principle Descartes could have gone on to assert in Le Monde the transmutability of the elements into which this matter-extension happened initially to be sorted. In fact, however, natural philosophizing was about producing detailed explanations of ranges of new and old facts, and ‘systematisation’ of the resulting suite of explanations. To ‘do’ natural philosophy, Descartes could not simply devote himself ad infinitum to ‘analysis’ of the doctrine of matter-extension and its possible implications. (Cf. note 11.) We see this already in the simple fact that the purpose of the cosmogonical story is to produce the elements and the types of structures—stars, vortices, planets—they constitute. In Cartesian natural philosophy, matter-extension as such lasts an instant (the instant of creation). While it exists in its pure state, no ‘nature’ or cosmos yet exists, so there is not yet any subject matter for natural philosophy. Similarly, although Descartes ‘could’ have had transmuting elements in Le Monde, based on his matter-extension doctrine, in articulating his natural philosophy in Le Monde, he specifically denied that possibility. Therefore, historians need to look to Descartes’ aims and tactics in natural philosophizing for reasons for his insistence in 1633 on what became unnecessary to assert in 1644.
- 14.
‘Confusion seems less in accordance with the supreme perfection of God the creator of things than proportion or order’ so he was ‘supposing at this point that all the particles of matter were, initially equal in respect both of their size and their motion’. This point and the other textual references in this paragraph are located at: Principles III articles 46–47; AT VIII-1 102–3; CSM I 257; MM 106–107.
- 15.
Heilbron (1979) 31–33.
- 16.
Two versions of star formation are offered in the Principles, III, articles 54 and 72; AT VIII-1 107–8, 125; MM 111, 122–3. The former version corresponds to our text above; the latter gives an explanation more dependent on diametrically opposite axial inflows of first element from the equatorial areas of neighboring vortices toward the center of the vortex the creation of whose central star is being discussed. Alternatively, the second story might be interpreted as Descartes’ detailed account of the movement of first element particles into and out of an already formed star. This latter account does map completely onto his explanation of the formation of oppositely handed, rimmed particles of first element which cause magnetic phenomena, given later in Book III Articles 87 through 93.
- 17.
The process of production of this sub-species of first element particles is related at Principles III articles 87–93; AT VIII-1 142–7; MM 132–6.
- 18.
Cf. Gaukroger (2002) 150. Principles, III, articles 65–67; AT VIII-1,116-119; MM 118–119.
- 19.
We put the matter this way because there is some ambiguity in Descartes’ text on the issue of where and how the right and left handed rimmed particles are formed. There is no doubt he intended that the larger particles of first element, being pressed through the interstices of the spherical boules, can become rimmed and handed; but, on the other hand it is also clear that it is their passage along the axis of vortical rotation into the polar regions of a central star that gives the oppositely directed particles their opposite twists. We defer to the excellent hermeneutics of Gaukroger on this point, noting his reading at two places in his analysis of the Principles: [1] At Gaukroger (2002) 152 the production of the rimming is elided with the twisting into handedness during the axial transit. ‘The larger parts of the first element have to pass around the tightly packed globules of the second element, and they become twisted into grooved threads, those coming from opposite poles being twisted in opposite directions, that is, having left- and right-handed screws (article. 91)’. [2] But, at pp.175–6 discussing Descartes’ treatment of terrestrial magnetism in Book IV of the Principles, Gaukroger seems to interpret the twisting into handedness to be a generic result of forcing through interstices of boules, and not necessarily (though perhaps sufficiently) a result of the cosmic transit along vortical axes of rotation: ‘The generation of these grooved particles had been set out in Part III (articles. 87–93). Their grooves derive from the fact that they are squeezed through the interstices of contiguous spherical globules. As a result of this squeezing they end up as cylinders having three or four concave sides joined by rims….Moreover, because they rotate on being squeezed through these interstices, the channels or grooves are rotated, forming a stream of diagonally grooved, cylindrical fragments, some of which have a left-hand screw, some a right-hand screw, according to the direction of the twist’.
- 20.
Principles III articles 94–95; AT VIII-1 147–8; MM 136.
- 21.
Principles III article 94; AT VIII-1 147–8; MM 136. Gaukroger (2002) 153 comments: ‘These grooved particles…move to the centre of the vortex. On account of their relatively small degree of agitation and their irregular surfaces, they easily lock together to form large masses at the surface of the star from which they emerge. Because of their size and small degree of agitation, they “resist that action in which we said earlier that the force of light consists” and as a result they appear as a spot on the surface of the Sun. Descartes compares the process by which they are formed to the boiling of water which contains some substance which resists motion more than the water: it rises to the surface on boiling to form a scum, which, by a process of agglutination, comes to acquire the character of the third element’.
- 22.
Principles III article 96; AT VIII-1 148. MM 136.
- 23.
Principles II article 23; AT VIII-1 52; CSM I 232. Descartes states explicitly ‘celestial matter is no different from terrestrial matter’.
- 24.
AT XI 28; SG 19; MSM 43–5. But by January 1639 he must have begun to change his theory of matter, because in a letter to Mersenne Descartes says: ‘some terrestrial particles continually take on the form of subtle matter when you crush them up; and some particles of this subtle matter attach themselves to terrestrial bodies, so there is no matter in the universe which could not take on all the forms’. (AT II 485; CSMK 133)
- 25.
As we have noted, leading interpreters, such as Lynes (1982) and Love (1975), approached the problem of the differences between Le Monde and the Principles as centrally concerning matter and element theory. Additionally they looked for external triggers or motives for Descartes making the changes. For example Lynes p.72 placed emphasis on religious motivations, with Descartes striving to overcome the possibly heretical implications of his early supposedly atomistic-looking matter theory in Le Monde by means of his putatively better ability later to demonstrate the absence of any void in nature in the Principles. (In fact Descartes has a robust plenist account in both treatises.) Similarly Love’s explanation for the changes in matter theory boils down to Descartes’ increasing commitment to a plenist physics in the Principles: She maintained that Descartes must have revised his theory of matter between 1637 and 1644, basing her claim on the fact that in the Discourse, published in 1637, there is only one subtle element, while in the Principles there are two. Love suggested that the change from one subtle element to two could have been triggered by Morin’s criticism of Descartes’ theory of light, in particular the need of some matter to fill in the void between globules that transmit light. This for Love meant in all probability that the unpublished 1633 version of Le Monde only had one subtle element and thus is not identical to the one eventually published in 1664. Hence, Love p. 127, claimed that the differences between the two works ‘follow from Descartes’ well-known identification of substance with spatial extension, and his consequent rejection of the void’. We leave aside here the overwhelming evidence that a close analysis of the text of Le Monde and its course of construction undermine all this, since it is virtually certain that Descartes had the three elements in the original conception, and simply note that Love’s explanation is based on a metaphysical driver, Lynes’ on a theological one. In response to these and other guesses at circumstantial external drivers of Descartes’ strategies and inscriptions, we suggest that the casting about for such putative causes is beside the point and actually rather ahistorical. When an actor is playing a competitive game in a field of contestation, the best initial explanation for the actor’s moves resides in the best picture the historian can devise of the actor’s assessment of the state of play, his resources and goals. (Cf. the seminal works on the socio-political dynamics of claim construction and negotiation in mature sciences by Pierre Bourdieu (1975); and Steven Shapin (1982), especially his discussion of actors’ vested interests in their own field and discipline’s state of play and likely directions of development, pp.164–69.) That is why this chapter, in accord with the basic premises of this book as a whole, stresses Descartes’ systematizing goals inside the game of natural philosophizing. It is also why we have related those goals to Descartes’ healthy respect for facts. Like any good, competitive natural philosopher (or later modern scientist) he knew facts need to be assessed, interpreted, selected for use, reframed in terms of the theory and claims under discussion, and argumentatively deployed for persuasion. His appetite for facts, their theoretical reframing and leveraging for further explanatory uses were intimately linked to his goals and strategies for building a winning system of natural philosophy, proclivities that will be display below, especially in Sects. 12.6, 12.7, 12.8, and 12.9.
- 26.
Aiton (1972) 3.
- 27.
On the mention of the issue in Le Monde, see above Sect. 10.8, Note 96 and corresponding text. The large discussion in the Principia occurs in Book III, articles 111–116 and includes the key figure to which the entire discussion is referred [Principia Plate XII, Figure i which is introduced below as Fig. 12.2 in Sect. 12.9]. At one point (article 114) Descartes interestingly likens the movement back and forth of a vortical boundary and the accompanying formation/destruction of stellar crusts of sunspots to the behavior of a pendulum. Cf. note 79 below.
- 28.
As Richard Westfall (1971, 36–37) describes the encounter over lab based manipulations: ‘…the mechanical philosophy had to explain away magnetic attraction by inventing some mechanism that would account for it without recourse to the occult. Descartes’ was particularly ingenious. In considerable detail, he described how the turning of the vortex generates screw-shaped particles which fit similarly shaped pores in iron. Magnetic attraction is caused by the motion of the particles, which in passing through the pores in magnets and iron, drive the air from between the two and cause them to move together. What about the fact of two magnetic poles? Very simple, Descartes replied; there are left handed screws and there are right handed screws’.
- 29.
- 30.
Similarly, Gilbert insisted that his knowledge was built on assiduous attention to experiments and to facts reported by craftsmen and artisans, and that it was productive of useful results, most notably improving the use of the magnetic compass in navigation.
- 31.
It might be asked whether I am maintaining that this strategy was deliberate on Descartes’ part or whether it exists merely as an analyst’s construct. I answer that it arguably was deliberate and part of his way of contesting for hegemony in natural philosophy. This is based on my reading the text of the Principia for its underlying goals and strategies, which I hold to be better than imputing motives based on circumstantial events or evidence. (Cf. above note 25 on Lynes and Love, and below Sect. 12.12, especially note 109, as well as the entire historiographical framework of Chap. 8 above, outlined in Sect. 8.1 of that chapter, used in explaining Descartes’ career ‘inflection’ toward composing Le Monde) .
- 32.
See the comments on this point above at note 19.
- 33.
Galileo Galilei, Letters on Sunspots, in Drake (1957), 87–144, at p.102. Compare Galileo 20 years later in the Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems (Galileo 1953), 54, ‘[many spots] dissolve and vanish far from the edge of the sun, a necessary argument that they must be generated and dissolved’.
- 34.
There are four contenders for the discovery of sunspots. Within about 18 months in 1611/2: Johann Fabricius (1611); Christopher Scheiner (1612) [under the pseudonym of Apelles]; and Galileo (1613), appeared and claimed discovery. Fabricius probably saw them as early as March 1611, Scheiner in spring 1611 and Galileo, who in 1613 responded to Scheiner’s published claims of 1612, claimed observations 18 months earlier (this was in the published version of his first letter, to Welser, on sunspots, May 14, 1612, hence he was claiming observations as early as 1610. In the Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems (Galileo 1953, 345), he again claimed observations as early as 1610. Harriot, whose observations exist only in manuscript form, has notes on sunspots dating from December 1610, but began regular observations only about year later, following Fabricius’ publication (Brody 2002, 68). It should also be noted that the painter and poet Raffael Gualterotti (1605) claimed to have followed for several days movements of spots on the sun. He explained them as resulting from a conjunction of Mars and Saturn which attracted exhalations and vapors which were drawn to the sun, purified and rarefied to become sunspots. Galileo knew Gualterotti and had corresponded with him (Brody 2002, 25–6, 55). Reeves et al. (2010) came to notice too late to be included in assessing these matters.
- 35.
Descartes to Mersenne, 8 October 1629, AT I 23; CSMK 6.
- 36.
Parhelia or mock suns or sun dogs are ‘two concentrations of light on the small halo at the same altitude as the sun’: Minnaert (1993) 214.
- 37.
On the process of emergence of the project of Le Monde, see above Sect. 8.4.
- 38.
AT I, 248 note referring back to p. 23 l.25–29. Judit Brody first pointed this out in drafts leading to our joint work on sunspots, novae, variable stars and the systematizing strategies of the Principia (Schuster and Brody, note 2)
- 39.
Eventually he dealt with parhelia in the Météores and with sunspots in the Principia.
- 40.
Descartes to Mersenne, 18 December 1630, AT I, 102–103.
- 41.
Descartes to Mersenne, January 1630, AT I 112–113; CSMK 18; Descartes to Mersenne, 4 March 1630, AT I 125. Gassendi observed spots between 1618 and 1638. Descartes was seeking information by correspondence regarding as yet unpublished material. Gassendi’s detailed reports on the 1626 observations and others only appeared in his Opera Omnia (1658) in the following locations: Vol.1 Syntagmatis philosophici pt 2 of pt 2 De rebus caelestibus pp.553–554 on spots; Vol.4 Observationes Coelestes ab anno 1618 in annum 1655 (repr.1658). Maculares solares (observations in 1626 p. 99–100, in 1638 pp. 411–412); Mercurius in Sole visus et Venus invisa… 1631 (1632) pp. 499–505 (letters to W. Schickard: Mercury was so small that at first Gassendi thought it was a sunspot).
- 42.
To Mersenne, 4 March 1630, AT I 125, Descartes writes, ‘Vous ne me dites pas de quel cofté font les pôles de cette bande, où fe remarquent les taches du Soleil , encore que ie ne doute point qu’ils ne correfpondent aucunement à ceux du monde, & leur ecliptique à la noftre’. This concerns the band to which sunspots seem confined, in particular, taking that band to be revolving around the sun, where the poles of its axis of rotation would be located. He doubts these poles correspond to the celestial poles and that the band’s inclination to the celestial equator would equal that of our ecliptic. All of which seems to imply that at this time his view was that the sunspots are not planets, or at least are not like the known planets (and so might well be on the surface of the sun on this argument). Scheiner’s original views had been supported by others, such as Jean Tarde (1620) and C. Malapertuis (1633), whilst Fortunius Licetus (1623) 124, held the interesting view, intermediate between theories of sunspots and orbiting planets, that spots cannot be solar exhalations because those would be more rarefied, not darker. He added that some falsely claim that there are craters on the sun. He thought they are parts of the aether condensing/rarefying in turn.
- 43.
For example: Leaving aside Gualterotti (1605) mentioned above note 34; Galileo likened ‘sunspots to clouds or smoke’ (Galileo 1957, 140); Kepler (1938ff, vol. 17, 36) in 1612 suggested to Simon Marius that spots might be like clouds originating from the fire of the sun and that perhaps cometary material also originates from the sun; J.R. Quietanus told Kepler, August 13, 1619, ibid. vol 17, 372, that he thought comets ‘ex maculis solis colligitur et coacervatur’ and Kepler told him in reply, August 31, 1619, ibid. vol 17, 376, that Marius agreed with this. Marius (1619) himself argued that comets might come from the sun because for the last year and half (covering the period of the comet of 1618) there had been few spots on the sun. He also stated that he had seen spots on the sun with tails; and generally held that the surface of the sun is like molten gold, the spots being like slag; Willebrord Snell (1619) also discussing the comet of 1618 explained comets as ‘maculae istae exhalationes…solis flagrantis atque ista ex recessu & interiore corpore per sua crateras eructantis quemadmodum in terris Aetna’.
- 44.
Le Monde, AT XI 29; SG 20; MSM 45. Also: ‘we shall take one of those round bodies composed of nothing but the matter of the first element to be the sun, and the others to be the fixed stars’, Le Monde, AT XI 53; SG 35; MSM 87. Cf. above note 13 and text to which it refers.
- 45.
Moreover in that case Descartes probably would have had to have taken some account of the strong claims for their appearance and disappearance, as mentioned above (note 33), often on the middle of the sun, a difficult challenge if they are planets (compared to their appearance and disappearance near the edges of the solar disk, which could be explained as visibility effects concerning continuously existing small planets). It should also be noted that when Descartes in the Principles accepts that the spots exist and form on the surface of the sun, there are celestial mechanical consequences with which he must deal: Observations of the spots indicate that the sun does not spin as quickly on its axis (in terms of linear velocity, not radial velocity) as the vortex theory would imply—that is, faster than any planet in its orbit. (Gaukroger 2002, 153 and Principles, III article 32, AT VIII-1 93; MM 97, where the rotational period for sunspots is given as 26 days.) For this and other reasons Descartes introduces the conception of stellar aether, an earthy atmosphere near a star, and extending out as far as its nearest planet, largely constituted by dissolved sunspots, which slows the rotational speed of the star (Principles III article 148, AT VIII-1, 196–7; MM 172). On other functions of the aether see below, note 59 and text thereto. Finally, the detection and description of transits of Venus or Mercury across the sun, posed many difficulties at the time, not to mention the complications introduced if one took sunspots actually to be conjunctions of small planets orbiting near the sun. For example, Scheiner had failed to observe a transit of Venus which he could have used early on to argue for the visibility of the other smaller planets whose conjunctions he claimed produced the appearances of sunspots (Brody 2002, 49). Gassendi in 1631 after hesitation, thinking he was observing a sunspot, claimed he had observed a transit of Mercury; while earlier, in 1607, Kepler had taken a sunspot for Mercury seen against the sun’s disk (Brody 2002, 27). After Gassendi’s observation there was more clarity about distinguishing a sunspot from a transiting planet. Hence by the time the transit of Venus was first observed in 1639 by Jeremiah Horrocks, as Brody (2002, 78) notes, ‘the argument had already turned around. Previously the emphasis was on proving that the spots were not planets, now it had to be shown that a planet was not a spot’.
- 46.
Scheiner (1630), 537, ‘maculae & faculae in ipso sole sunt’. Scheiner also stated that the spots grow, change, diminish, darken, lighten, disappear in the middle of the sun. Ibid. p.490.
- 47.
Principles, III article 35; AT IX-2, 118; MM 98–99.
- 48.
Descartes to Mersenne, February 1634, AT I 281.
- 49.
Ibid, Mais d’ailleurs les obferuations qui font dans ce liure, fournissent tant de preuues, pour oster au Soleil les mouuemens qu’on luy attribuë, que ie ne sçaurois croire que le P. Scheiner mesme en fon ame ne croye l’opinion de Copernic; ce qui m’étonne de telle forte que ie n’en ose écrire mon fentiment… (Also see MM 99, note 29).
- 50.
Arguably neither theory was fully acceptable to Descartes at the time of composing Le Monde: To decide that sunspots are generated and destroyed on the surface of the sun would violate the matter theory of Le Monde; but, to accept sunspots as small planets orbiting very near the sun would require first overcoming the scepticism he had expressed to Mersenne in 1630 about this claim (see note 42), and second, significant further articulation of his vortex celestial mechanics.
- 51.
Additionally, let us also recall that, thanks to Beeckman, Descartes first saw Galileo’s Dialogo in 1634 and so was potentially exposed to Galileo’s persuasive deployment of his claims about sunspots, which in turn served as powerful arguments for the (Copernican) unity of heaven and Earth. Of course, Descartes saw the book for a short time only, for thirty hours, but he made some reasonable use of it for his own purposes, as in his later reported critique of the natural philosophical relevance of Galileo’s abstract and idealized account of fall and projectile motion (To Mersenne, 11 October 1638, AT II 385).
- 52.
Principles, III article 35, AT VIII-1 95; MM 98.
- 53.
Principles, III article 74, AT VIII-1 129; MM 124.
- 54.
In addition, let us not forget that sunspots supplied observational evidence for the first time that the sun rotates. Although he does not say so, Descartes could not have wished for a better validation for his theory of vortices, notwithstanding the celestial mechanical issues requiring further adjustment, mentioned above at note 45. At the time of writing Le Monde he had passed up this advantage, which had been obvious to, and valued by Galileo and Kepler a generation earlier, when sunspots had first been observed.
- 55.
Judit Brody discovered that Descartes’ thoughts were later echoed by the Swiss astronomer Rudolf Wolf (1816–1893). ‘I compared the whole appearance of the sunspots to currents which proceed periodically from the two poles of the sun towards its equator.’ (Wolf 1861, 27) (Brody manuscript research notes leading to composition of Schuster and Brody, ‘Descartes on Sunspots’ [forthcoming, note 2].)
- 56.
Principles, III article 97, AT VIII-1 149; MM 137. Descartes’ explanation appeals to his explanation of prismatic colours in the Météores of 1637.
- 57.
Principles, III article 98, AT VIII-1, 149–50; MM 137–8; The explanation follows directly from Descartes’ theory of light. The first matter surging around the edges of a spot not only contributes to a tendency to motion propagated out through the boules of the vortex, but also produces a more than normal intensity of that tendency, a set of stronger than normal rays. (It is crucial to understand that in Descartes’ theory of light the propagation of the tendency to motion through the boules that constitutes light is always instantaneous, but the intensity or force of that tendency can vary. There can be weak or strong rays, albeit always instantaneously propagated. [This point was made clear in Chap. 4, and applied to reconstructing the development of Descartes’ physical optics.] Returning to Descartes’ explanation of faculae, strictly speaking he claims that a facula can form following the existence of a spot, and, by extension of the process described, a spot can turn into a facula; and vice versa, meaning that he claims that dark spots can turn into bright regions and vice versa.
- 58.
Principles, III article 96, AT VIII-1 148 MM 137.
- 59.
Principles, III article 100, AT VIII-1 150; MM 138–39. The central thread of Descartes’ narrative of the formation of the Earth in Part IV of the Principles involves the formation of all the third matter on Earth that exists above the inner, unreachable, crust that suffocated the original star. This new planetary third matter is formed largely from material derived from the aether of the dead star (Principles, IV articles 1–7, AT VIII-1 203–6; MM 181–4). Cf Note 87 below, and Chap. 11 Note 14 above.
- 60.
By modern definitions these of course were supernovae. The contemporary search for other novae included Johann Fabricius’ claim regarding Mira Ceti in 1596 (which we discuss immediately below in the context of the later claims that it is in fact a variable); and Kepler and others’ identification of a supposed nova in 1600 (Kepler acknowledged that it was first seen by W. J. Blaeu who put it on his celestial globe.) Cf. Hoskin (1977). The star of 1600 is now regarded as a LBV (luminous blue variable), hence it is neither a nova nor a supernova.
- 61.
Explanations invoking divine action could include the following: the star has been around since the creation but it was hidden and brought to the fore by God as a sign of his omnipotence; or, it had actually been newly created by God. A miracle could be carried out directly by God or through natural causes at the fiat of God. The latter might well violate the sense of ‘natural’ that previously held in a given natural philosophy. For example a Christian Aristotelian could take a new star as the result of God’s decision to use (hitherto unknown but) natural causes in the heavens to generate a new star. Problems would be created for the natural philosophy as previously expounded.
- 62.
The latter possibility was discussed by Tycho Brahe in his Astronomiae instauratae progymnasmatum pars tertia (1916, vol. III, 204). This reports the opinions of John Dee and Gemma Cornelius that the new star moves away in a straight line. However there is also evidence that both Gemma (1573), and Michael Maestlin had thought the 1572 nova was newly created. Maestlin thought there were not enough exhalations and that the star was newly created by God. This was published in his Demonstratio astronomica loci stellae novae, tum respectu centri mundi.... appearing pp.27–32 in Frischlin (1573). The key passage was recently cited by Granada (2007, 104). Maestlin’s ‘edificatory poem’ (Granada 2007, 101) states that the star announces the second coming. Maestlin deals mainly with the location of the star, except for the key passage in question, which was also quoted by Tycho (1916, III, 60) as part of his reproduction of the entire document with commentary (1916, III, 58–62, with commentary, 62–67.) Tycho himself said that the new star was formed of matter from the Milky Way, but not of such perfection or solid composition as other stars, in the Conclusio to (1969 [1572]). Fortunius Licetus (1623), held that the phenomena are created and then annihilated. He also writes that there are also some people who think a nova is an old star, neglected, not observed by the ancients. Reisacher and Valesius (or Vallesius) thought an old faint star got brighter through sudden transformation of the air between it and us, so it was not a new creation (Dreyer 1890, 63–64). (Vallesius is quoted in Tacke 1653 and by Reisacher 1573.) Kepler, in his De stella nova in pede Serpentarii (Pragae 1606), Chapter 20 (Kepler 1938, I, 248–51) reports discussions with David Fabricius about where the material for the new star of 1596 (Mira Ceti) came from: whether the star had been around since the creation but hidden and then brought to the fore by God as a sign; or newly created either by God or by physical processes from existing material which must be all over the universe, since (Ibid., Chapter 22, 259) the ‘star in the whale’, was not close to the Milky Way.
- 63.
David Fabricius (1612) wrote that novae, like comets, do not dissipate but can remain unseen, then reappear. Little note was taken of this claim, let alone any possible natural philosophical significances. Hence, in accord with modern understandings of the construction and attribution of discoveries in science, it would be quite wrong to credit Fabricius with the discovery of variable stars. See Arjen Dijkstra (2011) 77.
- 64.
Dijkstra (2011) 86–87.
- 65.
Holwardus (1640), pars secunda de novis phaenomenis, sive stellis, 185–288. The star disappeared after he first observed it, and Holwarda failed to observe it all through the summer of 1639 (‘frustra omnia’, p.285). But, Holwarda saw it again about 11 months later, on Nov 7, 1639. By that time his book was being been printed, so he added an appendix (pp.277–88) about the reappearance. Here he pointed out that he had already suggested the phenomenon might disappear and reappear, and now identified the observations with a star in Cetus (Dijkstra 2011, 86–87, see also 89ff on the design and aim of Holwarda’s book). A slightly different account of the timing of Holwarda’s observations, making use of the work of Michael Hoskin (1977), is offered by Donahue (2006), 590–91, according to which Holwarda re-observed Mira Ceti in 1640 while his book reporting the initial discovery was in press, the appendix being added to report that reappearance. Note that, given Mira Ceti’s 11 month cycle the 1640 observation by Holwarda must have been no earlier than October of that year.
- 66.
Bullialdus [Bouilliau] (1667) established Mira Ceti’s period as about 333 days, allowing him successfully to predict future appearances. He proposed that the star rotates, periodically showing a more luminous region to earthly observers. So, as Dijkstra (2011, 92–97) convincingly shows, and as we might expect based on modern studies of the negotiation and attribution of discovery, the historical process of recognizing that a periodically disappearing and reappearing star had been found was long and hotly contested.
- 67.
Vermij (2002) says Descartes was in contact with many Dutch scholars (as is well known in any case), but offers no evidence concerning Holwarda. Terpstra (1981) says there is no proof that Descartes knew Holwarda, but also claims, p.67 that there is no doubt of Descartes’ influence on natural philosophy in Franeker; that Descartes certainly influenced Holwarda; but, that there is no proof they met in person. This question is not definitively resolved. Judit Brody is currently exploring it further. Mersenne was quickly made well aware of Holwarda’s work and the ensuing debate (Dijkstra 2011, 94–95), and so he may have been Descartes’ main or initial informant on the matter.
- 68.
Clarke (2006) Appendix 1 on ‘Descartes’ Principal Works’. Descartes was working on the Principles all during his controversy with Voetius and the University of Utrecht, the publication of the Meditations in 1641 and various entanglements with some Jesuits. It was only in January 1643 that he told Constantijn Huygens that he was currently working on the sections about magnetism. Ibid. 233. Clarke (note 30 to page 233) assumes this applies to the explanation of Gilbert’s lab manipulations in Book IV of the Principles, but it might just as well apply to the cosmic magnetism prominent in Book III.
- 69.
Principles, III articles 102, 104; AT VIII-1 151–2; MM 139–40, 140–41.
- 70.
Principles, III article 111; AT VIII-1, 158–60; MM 144–5.
- 71.
Descartes refers explicitly only to novae, but here the reappearance at the same place is an important feature, as we shall see. Principles, III article 104; AT VIII-1 152; MM 140–1
- 72.
Principles, III article 111; AT VIII-1 158–60; MM 144–5.
- 73.
Principles, III articles 105–108; AT VIII-1 153–56; MM 141–143.
- 74.
One should recall that first element particles are constantly flowing into the central star from the north and south along its axis of rotation.
- 75.
Principles, III article 111; AT VIII-1 158–60; MM 144–5.
- 76.
Principles, III articles 112, 114; AT VIII-1 160–2; MM 145, 146–7.
- 77.
Principles, III article 104; AT VIII-1 152; MM 140–1. Descartes cites the 1572 nova in Cassiopeia, ‘a star not previously seen’. He also mentions, more controversially: [1] the possibility of the disappearance of one of the Pleiades in ancient times, seven stars being mentioned in myth but only six reported by later Greek writers (MM 140 note 105)—such a star, if it once was visible, has obviously been occluded for over 2,000 years; and [2] the presumed fact that, ‘We also notice other [more enduring] stars in the sky which formerly were unknown [to the ancients]’, a claim which MM otherwise explain in their note 107 to p.141.
- 78.
Principles, III articles 112, 114, AT VIII-1 160–2; MM 145, 146–7. In contrast to the 1572 nova which he does report, Descartes does not name Mira Ceti, Fabricius, Fullenius or Holwarda. It is almost as though he is happier to offer the explanation in principle for a phenomenon of which he surely is aware in general, but without giving any firm citation of dates, discoverers or objects, thus revealing a still neo-Scholastic approach to the description and explanation of phenomena as ‘generally well known’. Cf. Dear (1995). See also Sect. 12.12 below, point [3] and note 108.
- 79.
See for example: Principles, III article 104, AT VIII-1 152; MM 140. Speaking of novae, in particular the 1572 nova, Descartes says that such a star ‘may continue to show this brilliant light for a long time afterwards, or may lose it gradually’. Cf. Principles, III article 111, AT VIII-1 159; MM 145: the ‘almost instantaneous’ appearance of a star; Principles, III article 112, AT VIII-1 160–1; MM 145: a star ‘slowly disappearing’; and, Principles, III article 114, AT VIII-1 162; MM 146–7, the same star can alternately appear and disappear, which phenomenon Descartes elucidates with the analogy of pendulum motion (see note 27 above). An excellent exposition of Descartes’ theories of comets, variable stars and novae (as a sub-species thereof) may be found in Heidarzadeh (2008), 67–81. Very helpful and well conceived diagrams accompany the discussion of the key points.
- 80.
Principles III article 101, AT VIII-1 151; MM 139: ‘That the production and disintegration of spots depend upon causes which are very uncertain’, a remark to be taken in conjunction with his explanations offered in the next 20 or so articles of the Principles, dealing with novae, variables and sunspots.
- 81.
The ‘re’ is in brackets, because causally the star may be reappearing, but humans may only be noticing a star in that position for the first time; it is what European natural philosophers and astronomers had since 1572 called a new star.
- 82.
Principia III, arts, 118–119; AT VIII-1, 166–168; MM 149–50.
- 83.
The narration/explanation of Earth formation and structure occurs at Principia, IV, arts 1–44, AT VIII-1, 203–231; MM181–203. Most of the attention paid to this material has been devoted to seeing Descartes as a founder of the early modern and enlightenment tradition of speculative theorizing about the Earth. (Cf. Roger 1973) The unfolding of this tradition, particularly in its English Protestant context, has been most perspicaciously analyzed by Peter Harrison (2000) who correctly suggested that the issue was not the substitution of a natural philosophical cosmogony for the account in Genesis, but rather the nuanced issue of which natural philosophical account best explicated or shed light on Genesis, a matter about which Descartes’ account arguably had already displayed some sensitivity. Harrison argued that many historians mistakenly think that late seventeenth century English natural theologians and natural philosophers read Descartes’ cosmogony and cosmology as a history, which therefore would have to agree with or contradict a history in Genesis. Against this Harrison pointed out that the central issue for the players was not whether Cartesian philosophy provided a parallel creation narrative. It was, rather, whether ‘Cartesian or Aristotelian Philosophy would shed more light on the biblical account of creation.’ It was not Descartes versus Moses on history, but which natural philosophy—Cartesian or Aristotelian—better explicated what Henry More, for example, had called ‘The Physiological part of Mosaical Philosophy’. Clearly, once we understand the structure and dynamics of the field of natural philosophizing, as sketched and applied in this volume, we can see that similar points apply to Descartes himself. The issue for natural philosophical actors, including Descartes, was correctness in the natural philosophical field (Descartes vs. Aristotle), and the mode of articulation of natural philosophical utterances onto Genesis. Additionally, Harrison’s ideas can be extended even further, in accord with the themes of the present volume, granted that we grasp the natural philosophical (rather than primarily theological) intention of the Principia cosmogony and earth history. As we are seeing in this chapter, the cosmogony and earth history play a brilliantly contrived, and controlled, role in the ‘system-binding’ of the natural philosophy taught in the Principia, well beyond the system which we discerned in the pages of Le Monde.
- 84.
As analysed in detail above in Sect. 10.2.3.
- 85.
Satellites are also planetary in nature as we know from our detailed study of Le Monde’s celestial mechanics and theory of the moon. See also Le Monde AT X 69–70; SG 45; where the moon is termed a planet: ‘…if two planets meet that are unequal in size but disposed to take their course in the heavens at the same distance from the sun…’. In the Principles, of course, Descartes can rely on his genealogy of planets from encrusted stars— for example, at Book III article 146; AT VIII-1 195–96; MM 171: ‘Concerning the creation of all the Planets’ where it is clear that the planets of our solar system, along with the Earth’s moon, the four satellites of Jupiter and the two Descartes attributes to Saturn all derive from encrusted stars in now defunct vortices, and are ‘planetary’ in nature.
- 86.
For Galileo and Descartes the tides provide a prime example of a phenomenon on Earth which, if well theorized, provides strong evidence for the motion of the Earth. Biro’s analysis, which we followed in Sect. 11.3, devotes two chapters to their cosmographical use of theories of the tides (Biro 2009, 72–110). For Descartes in the Principles, tides are implied to be a feature of all planets, just as their magnetism is. Both sets of phenomena would be present on any and every planet, since their genealogies are identical to that of our Earth: Every planet carries with it the axial orientation of pores to accept the two species of screw shaped particles of first matter which it had as a star. Exactly how this is retained in the now third matter crustal layer[s] of the planet is detailed in Descartes’ story of the Earth in Part IV of the Principles. Similarly the process of formation of oceans, mountains, valleys and atmosphere would be the same for all planets evolved from dead stars.
- 87.
The crust in question is not the primordial crust formed of sunspots which initially strangled the star. That crust remains deep in the planet, untouched by this process of creation of oceans, seas, landforms and atmosphere. Cf. note 59, and Chap. 11, Note 14.
- 88.
The historiographical view point behind this remark was set down in Chap. 1, note 25 and has been adhered to throughout, but with particular reference to the issue of explaining Descartes’ career inflection in Chap. 8 and whenever the agonistic dynamics of the field of natural philosophy have been in view, as here.
- 89.
- 90.
In the thirteenth century, Aristotelians such as Sacrobosco and Michael Scot tried to reconcile the ideal picture of concentric spheres of the elements with the indubitable existence of dry land by proposing that the earth emerged slightly from the sphere of water. In the fourteenth century, Jean Buridan and Albert of Saxony articulated the ‘floating apple’ model of the Earth to square theory of the Earth with the additional belief, ascribed to Aristotle in some circles, that the sphere of water is ten times larger than that of earth. Biro (2009), 17–21, 23–25, following GGR. The Scholastic debates examined by GGR about the shape of the Earth and the distribution of water and earth certainly were cosmographical, having to do with fitting together the cosmological and Earth theoretical dimensions of the natural philosophy. This is especially true, given the fact that the issues studied by GGR concerned outright systemic tensions between the cosmologically dictated shape of the elemental realms—of aether, fire, air, water and earth—and considerations driven by need to define on Earth the place and extent of dry land above water.
- 91.
In the late fifteenth and sixteenth century, controversy erupted with thinkers like Vadianus, Fernal, Nunes and Peucer rejecting the floating apple model of the Earth on the basis of knowledge gained from the voyages of discovery, and campaigning for the notion of a spherical, terraqueous globe derived from Ptolemy’s Geography. It appears that the terraqueous globe entered university curricula only in the late sixteenth century through the efforts of Clavius. Biro (2009), 17–21, 30–36.
- 92.
Biro (2009), 28–30, 36–39, synthesizing the important claims by GGR on this little appreciated point.
- 93.
Reflecting of course her initial training in the School of HPS at the University of New South Wales, via her MA thesis, supervised by the present author.
- 94.
Biro is able to offer a most interesting historiographical observation in this connection: Despite all the excellent scholarly work recently expended upon Renaissance and early modern geography, the numerous attempts in that literature to answer the question, ‘What did geography have to do with the Scientific Revolution?’, have all been stuck on idea that geography provided models of empirical method, or of appropriately utilitarian aims and values for ‘the new science’ (Biro 2009, pp.15–6). Biro’s argument directs us not to the supposed methodological or normative contributions of geography, but directly to the issue of how part of its substantive content was played upon, and played into, the most dynamic and turbulent part of the process of natural philosophical contention that marked the period. In addition, going beyond Biro’s point, there is the consideration that the usual arguments for methodological/normative ‘influence’ from geography to ‘science’ are simply redundant reiterations of arguments variously made, since the 1930s, for many of the domains of the practical arts and practical mathematics. What is needed is attention to the way active natural philosophical players adopted and adapted claims and hardwares from practical mathematics into their natural philosophical agendas and strategies, in accord with the sort of cultural process model of natural philosophy advanced in this book. See also on the practical mathematics and the Scientific Revolution question, including, on the historiographical issues involved, J.A. Schuster, ‘Consuming and appropriating the mixed mathematical fields, or, being ‘influenced’ by them: the case of the young Descartes’ available on my website: http://descartes-agonistes.com. Some points related to this study were made above, Sect. 8.4.2, concerning Descartes dealings in practical optics with Ferrier.
- 95.
Biro (2009) on Gilbert, 57–64; on Galileo, 73–94, on Descartes, 95–110.
- 96.
As for the long term strategic tendency of realist Copernican natural philosophers to pursue cosmography with novel Earth theory claims and extrapolations, we see an evolution from Copernicus’ own concentration on the shape of planet Earth, through Gilbert’s detailed natural philosophizing about the inner structure and make up of the Earth, down to Descartes’ invocation of a process of heavenly generation to cement his cosmography and provide a developmental story for his claims about Earth’s structure and formation. As Biro argues, for realist Copernicans the exploitation of strategic space in cosmography was a continuing theme in their corners of the natural philosophical field, and so Descartes’ ‘theory of the earth’ is not so much the stark novelty that some historians of geology sometimes make it out to be, but a radical turn embedded in a longer running strategic campaign by the supporters of realist Copernicanism. This approach also allows Biro to compare and contrast the cosmographical strategies of various actors. For example, she is able to point out the interesting differences in modeling of oceans in Galileo’s and Descartes’ theories of the tides: For Galileo it is the containment of particular seas and oceans in their basins that allows the combined orbital movement and diurnal spin of the Earth mechanically to cause the tides. For Descartes, as we have seen in Sect. 11.3, the theory of tides depends on stressing the fluid continuity of all the Earth’s sea and oceans.
- 97.
We have of course seen important cosmographical elements in Le Monde: for example, the fundamental assertion that the Earth is just another planet, in a realist Copernican framework of infinitely many stellar systems; the overtones of the new element theory, discussed above in note 10, and the theory of the tides, as we have mentioned.
- 98.
I gratefully acknowledge that number of the foregoing points in this paragraph emerged in course of my supervision of Biro’s research toward her MA thesis (2006), which was then transformed into Biro (2009). I was then able to articulate these insights in my succeeding collaboration with Judit Brody on Schuster and Brody (Note 2).
- 99.
Early in Book II of the Principia, at article 25, Descartes defines motion as ‘the transfer of one piece of matter or of one body, from the neighborhood of those bodies immediately contiguous to it and considered at rest, into the neighborhood of [some] others’ (AT VIII-1 53–54; MM 51). This is the philosophical definition of motion contrasted with vulgar or common understandings (Cf. Book II, article 24 ‘What movement is in the ordinary sense’).
- 100.
Principia, III article 28, AT VIII-1 90; MM 94–95: ‘…no movement, in the strict sense, is found in the Earth or even in the other Planets; because they are not transported from the vicinity of the parts of the heaven immediately contiguous to them, inasmuch as we consider these parts of the heaven to be at rest. For, to be thus transported, they would have to be simultaneously separated from all the contiguous parts of the heaven, which does not happen’.
- 101.
Daniel Garber (1992), 181–88, discusses the matter with his usual care and perspicacity. In the end, p.188, Garber rejects the view that Descartes’ theory of motion and its laws is an ‘elaborate mask’, a ‘contrived stratagem’ to allow him to deny motion to the Earth.
- 102.
Peter Dear (2001), 96, ‘Descartes was not worried about the potential heresy inherent in his ideas about the extent of the universe or the nature of the stars. He major concern…was the unorthodoxy (as defined by Galileo’s trial) of holding that the earth is in motion. Descartes published the Principles, with its more elaborate version of the same world–picture as that of Le Monde, only once he had thought of a way to deny the movement of the earth without compromising any of his cosmology. The trick (and that is what is really was) involved emphasizing the relativity of motion’. And, p.98, ‘The subtlety of Descartes’ theology was matched by the subtlety of his physics. As far as he could help it, no one would be able to accuse him of teaching that the earth moves’.
- 103.
Readers familiar with legal proceedings, then or now, would recognize the strength of Descartes’ position, if threatened in a legal context. He could have quoted, verbatim, extensive and connected published passages about the true, ‘philosophical’ definition of motion and the non-motion of the Earth, and read those passages with pointed literalness.
- 104.
Innumerable instances of Descartes’ habitually secretive, reclusive, publicly masked and overtly tricky persona are captured with great panache in Desmond Clarke (2006).
- 105.
Although we might make an exception for Christiaan Huygens, who mocks exactly the interweaving of cosmographical claims into what we termed the explanatory and descriptive narrative in the Principles. Huygens wondered how Descartes. ‘an ingenious man, could spend all that pains in making such fancies hang together’ [Cosmotheoros (The Hague 1698), cited in Brody (2002), 84]. This mirrors a change in natural philosophical temper and rules in the next generation, leading to exactly the dissipation of the Cartesian system and piecemeal use and criticism of it that we discuss immediately below. However, Huygens (no modern historian!) misses the point about what the game of natural philosophizing was about in the preceding Baroque age, and how well Descartes had played.
- 106.
Cf. note 83.
- 107.
In the telling remark that ends Book III (AT VIII-1 202; MM 177), Descartes asserts that all inequalities of planetary motion can be sufficiently explained using the framework he has provided. Clearly he in no way intends that explanations will proceed by deductions from laws of motion, plus boundary conditions, leading to the exposure and study of various levels and types of perturbations. So, for example, it is not elliptical orbits, and their deviations that he wishes to study, leading to refinement of the relevant laws. Rather, he offers a ‘sufficient’ (verbal and qualitative) explanation of orbital phenomena and the general facts that no orbit is perfectly circular, and that all orbits display variations over time.
- 108.
Descartes introduces the section of Book III of the Principles, dealing with sunspots, novae and variable stars at Article 101 by stating: (AT VIII1, 151; M 139) ‘That the production and disintegration of spots depend upon causes which are very uncertain.’ Cf. above note 78 and text thereto.
- 109.
Cf. above notes 25, 31. By this juncture it is perhaps appropriate to point out that there was nothing defensive or reactive about Descartes’ novel moves in the Principles which I have discussed in this chapter. Love (1975) and Lynes (1982) might each be read as depicting Descartes as motivated, even forced, to make matter theoretical changes by defensive consideration of real or possible theological or metaphysical criticism. But merely defensive gambits arguably would have taken quite different shapes, as we have hinted. Natural philosophical contestation may be decoded in part as like a game; its rules of utterance are in part determinable; and, as in other games, when master players make well considered, complex attacking moves, that is obvious to attentive spectators. I modestly offer this as a final, parting example of the historiographical policy and practice pursued throughout this volume: Historians’ of nature-knowledge games should pose questions and seek answers that are framed by theorizing and testing of ‘iceberg’ type categories and models of those games, their mutual articulations and their contexts. (On iceberg categories, such as that of natural philosophizing as developed passim in this volume, cf. Sects. 1.3; 2.3; 2.5.0; 2.5.5.) This, I submit, on present evidence is preferable to simply accepting the often unreflected upon suite of problems (and forms of answers) that routine training in a given historical specialty might confer—in this case ‘history of matter theory’ or ‘history of ideas’ about same.
References
Works of Descartes and Their Abbreviations:
AT = Oeuvres de Descartes (revised edition, 12 vols.), edited by C. Adam and P. Tannery (Paris, 1964–1976). References are by volume number (in roman) and page number (in Arabic).
SG = The World and Other Writings, edited and translated by Stephen Gaukroger (Cambridge,1998).
MM = René Descartes, The Principles of Philosophy, translated by V. R. Miller and R. P. Miller (Dordrecht, 1991).
MSM = Rene Descartes, Le Monde, ou Traité de la lumière, translated by Michael S. Mahoney (New York, 1979).
CSM(K) = The Philosophical Writings Of Descartes, 3 vols., translated by John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, and Dugald Murdoch, and (for vol. 3) Anthony Kenny, (Cambridge, 1988) References are by volume number (in roman) and page number (in arabic).
HR = The Philosophical Works of Descartes, vol I translated by E.S. Haldane and G.R.T. Ross (Cambridge, 1968 [1st ed. 1911]).
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Schuster, J. (2012). Cosmography, Realist Copernicanism and Systematising Strategy in the Principia Philosophiae . In: Descartes-Agonistes. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, vol 27. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-4746-3_12
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