Bernard de Fontenelle

Fontenelle, Bernard de (1657–1757)

Despite his considerable historical importance and vast output of literary, critical and philosophical works, Fontenelle did not make original contributions to philosophy. He popularized a modern view of nature, and raised doubts about institutionalized religions and unexamined theistic beliefs. As a champion of science and secularization, Fontenelle was extremely influential; his Entretiens (Conversations) of 1686 were quickly translated into many languages and became one of the basic texts of the early Enlightenment.

1 Life and work

Bernard Le Bovier (‘Boyer’) de Fontenelle was born in Rouen, France, and received a Jesuit education at the Collège de Bourbon. Early literary fame and the support of Pierre and Thomas Corneille, his uncles, gained him access to the intellectual and social circles of Paris. He was elected to the Academie Française in 1687 and became its perpetual secretary ten years later. He died in Paris shortly before his one-hundredth birthday.

Fontenelle wrote poems, tragedies, novels, comedies and libretti for operas (set to music by Jean-Baptiste Lully). The pieces written for the stage met with only moderate success. Apart from satires, dialogues and critical essays, he composed so-called ‘lettres galantes’ and maintained a far-reaching correspondence with the leading thinkers of his time.

As a historian of science, Fontenelle distinguished himself through his exhaustive report of the Academy’s work since its inception, the Histoire de l’Académie royale des sciences depuis 1666 jusqu’en 1699 (1720–33). Several multivolume sequels followed at regular intervals. Parallel to these chronicles, Fontenelle drafted almost seventy eulogies on deceased members, the Éloges des académiciens (1708, 1722 and following), reviewing and summarizing their achievements.

Interested in the infinitesimal calculus, Fontenelle wrote a preface to a work by d’Hôpital and an account of recent mathematical research, the Éléments de la géometrie de l’infini (1727). In his philosophy of nature, Fontenelle defended theories developed by others instead of developing new ideas; in his philosophy of religion, he was a sceptic inspired by de Huet, Thomassin and Spinoza (see Huet, P.-D. §2; Spinoza, B. de §14). But as a popularizer and advocate, Fontenelle became an influential champion of science and secularization, and the leading pioneer of the early French Enlightenment.

2 Philosophy of nature

Fontenelle’s most famous work is the 1686 Entretiens sur la pluralité des mondes habités (Conversations on the Plurality of the Inhabited Worlds). This popular account of astronomy and natural philosophy consists of five dialogues, to which a sixth dialogue was added in a revised edition of 1687. The conversations begin with the assertion that our planetary system is not the only one in the universe: there are others whose suns are the fixed stars. Earth and the planets revolve around the sun; the celestial motions are described by the Copernican model and explained by Cartesian vortices. The second dialogue touches on the corpuscular theory of light, an explanation of solar eclipses and the possibility of space flight, and turns into a discussion about the moon. An examination of lunar features reveals the moon to resemble Earth in significant respects. Considering this, Fontenelle speculates that Earth’s satellite is inhabited. This claim is expanded in the third dialogue. The microscope reveals a compelling ubiquity of life even in the tiniest water droplet and on the smallest stone in our world. Since Earth and other heavenly bodies are alike in their appearances, we can treat them alike in what is not apparent as well, as long as evidence to the contrary is lacking. Operating with this strong principle of analogical reasoning, Fontenelle argues for the possibility of life on other worlds. The fourth and fifth dialogues are imaginative summaries of the current knowledge about planets and stars. The supplementary sixth dialogue contains an update of recent astronomical and geological discoveries and a reflection on probability and analogical reasoning.

What makes this work interesting is Fontenelle’s persuasive presentation of an entirely modern worldview. Anthropocentrism is obsolete; humans do not reside at the centre of a small enclosed universe, but are just one among many possible civilizations in a boundless cosmic ocean in which worlds are scattered like so many islands. It is doubtful that humans are the pinnacle of creation; far more advanced beings may exist. Anthropomorphism fails to fathom how such extraterrestrials might look; the universe is too fertile and diverse for even the boldest imagination. But despite its diversity, the cosmos is a well-ordered system: a principle of order generates a maximum of effects with a minimum of means. These means are mechanical and law-governed, and modern science can account for them. The Entretiens proved to be extremely influential in the European thought of the eighteenth century; Fontenelle’s conception of nature was picked up by subsequent philosophes and even influenced Kant’s cosmology.

Throughout his life, from the Entretiens to the Lettre à Basnage de Beauval (1699) to his last work, the Théorie des tourbillons cartésiens (1752), Fontenelle defended Cartesian vortices against the rise of Newton’s universal gravitation. Since whirls of matter presuppose a medium, Fontenelle argued for the existence of a cosmic ether in which heavenly bodies move. Apart from that, however, Fontenelle did not feel much allegiance to Cartesianism. Whereas Descartes excluded teleology, Fontenelle emphasized purposive explanations of nature. Fontenelle rejected Malebranche’s occasionalist interpretation of Descartes in the Doutes sur le système physique des causes occasionelles (1686b), favouring a physical influx model of causality (see Occasionalism).

3 Philosophy of religion

On the surface, God seems to be an indispensable part of Fontenelle’s universe, but it remains unclear what God is. Like Spinoza, Fontenelle subscribed to the idea that there is a fundamental conformity between the order of reason and the order of nature (see Spinoza, B. de §§5–6). This conformity permits humans to know nature but does not lead to knowledge of God. Like the Deists, in his correspondence with Leibniz (1701–4) Fontenelle took the principle of order to be immanent to nature: matter, not God, determines the laws of motion (see Deism). The nature of God’s existence cannot be known; at the very least, the Cartesian proofs do not work (Sur l’existence de Dieu 1724). Fontenelle remained evasive about these issues through fear of censorship and persecution. At any rate, the utopian society envisaged in the clandestine novel Histoire des Ajaoiens (c.1680, attributed to Fontenelle) is devoid of institutionalized monotheism, and instead embraces pantheism.

Continuing themes of Fontenelle’s work were his impatience with superstition and his criticisms of religious credulity. He derided pagan superstition in the Dialogues des morts (1683), and in La Comète (1681), a comedy written after the appearance of Halley’s Comet in 1680, ridiculed the widespread belief that passing comets have negative effects. According to De l’origine des fables (1679, published 1724 as part of Sur l’histoire) and the Histoire des oracles (1686c), religions stem from an anthropological and a social source. Human imagination triggered by an ignorance of natural phenomena, and successful imposters exploiting human gullibility were the first causes of religious beliefs.

In the essay Traité de la liberté de l’âme (written 1700, seized and burnt on parliamentary order, republished anonymously in the 1743 collection Nouvelles libertés de penser), Fontenelle raised even more serious questions. Not only is God unknowable, not only do religions derive from human imagination, but it also appears that divine foreknowledge and human freedom are incompatible. Although Fontenelle makes an ostensible attempt at their reconciliation, the actual result of his examination is different: divine foreknowledge implies fatalism; human freedom is possible only without a prescient God.