Raamin Mostaghimi
10/23/06
Occ Civ Section 8
10/23/06
Occ Civ Section 8
Fontenelle's Conversations on the Plurality of Worlds
Fontenelle's Conversations was, I thought, one of the most interesting works we've read all semester. Fontenelle does something which isn't really strange right now in modern scientific thinking, but must have been incredible in his time- apply the principle of mediocrity. Science is the only place where I've seen this done, but it makes sense that it would be applicable in philosophy as well. The idea of this principle is that no single human (or, by extension, humanity) is unique in its position- so if you're in a field and you happen upon a daisy on your first downward glance, the rational thing to assume is that the field is filled with daisies, not that you've found the only daisy in the entire field just by happenstance.
This same principle applies to life, according to Fontenelle, which is incredibly interesting. He does make some concessions to religion in one of the opening conversations, but aside from determining simply that the inhabitants of other worlds are not men (and so need not be sons of Adam), he basically sets the role of religion to one side- with one notable exception (which I'll talk about a bit later). Here's the huge thing- he assumes that humans aren't unique! To my knowledge, this has never really been done before. There was a reason that the geocentric model of the universe prevailed up until Galileo, Brahe, and Copernicus- because Men believed that they were unique in the universe, and thus special. What Fontenelle is suggesting is that humans are just one of millions of groups of intelligent life, one of millions of groups who build cities and live and die and admire the stars- and this had never been done before. But what makes this even more shocking is that he still acknowledges the existence of God while he does so.
And here's where I come back to Fontenelle's acknowledgment of God. He constantly brings up that each planet was made "by Nature." For Jupiter, there were four moons "made" to compensate its inhabitants for its long night (p.55), and this sort of language continues throughout the text. To me, this means that Fontenelle takes mediocrity one step farther than it had been taken before. Not only is he saying that humans aren't alone in the universe, he's saying that God put other creatures there as well. This is a hard deduction to make at the time- another leading Catholic scholar and philosopher came to the conclusion that extraterrestrials could not exist, because if they did they wouldn't be men, and if they weren't men (sons of Adam), then they would require salvation (because God is merciful). If they required salvation, they would need an 'alien Jesus Christ,' and this would violate the uniqueness of Christ, something that just couldn't be done. So you see, Fontenelle was a bit of a revolutionary.
Questions:
Did Fontenelle really intend to challenge humanity's uniqueness the way he did?
What sort of beliefs did Fontenelle have on the necessity of salvation of the aliens he had posited?
Fontenelle's Conversations was, I thought, one of the most interesting works we've read all semester. Fontenelle does something which isn't really strange right now in modern scientific thinking, but must have been incredible in his time- apply the principle of mediocrity. Science is the only place where I've seen this done, but it makes sense that it would be applicable in philosophy as well. The idea of this principle is that no single human (or, by extension, humanity) is unique in its position- so if you're in a field and you happen upon a daisy on your first downward glance, the rational thing to assume is that the field is filled with daisies, not that you've found the only daisy in the entire field just by happenstance.
This same principle applies to life, according to Fontenelle, which is incredibly interesting. He does make some concessions to religion in one of the opening conversations, but aside from determining simply that the inhabitants of other worlds are not men (and so need not be sons of Adam), he basically sets the role of religion to one side- with one notable exception (which I'll talk about a bit later). Here's the huge thing- he assumes that humans aren't unique! To my knowledge, this has never really been done before. There was a reason that the geocentric model of the universe prevailed up until Galileo, Brahe, and Copernicus- because Men believed that they were unique in the universe, and thus special. What Fontenelle is suggesting is that humans are just one of millions of groups of intelligent life, one of millions of groups who build cities and live and die and admire the stars- and this had never been done before. But what makes this even more shocking is that he still acknowledges the existence of God while he does so.
And here's where I come back to Fontenelle's acknowledgment of God. He constantly brings up that each planet was made "by Nature." For Jupiter, there were four moons "made" to compensate its inhabitants for its long night (p.55), and this sort of language continues throughout the text. To me, this means that Fontenelle takes mediocrity one step farther than it had been taken before. Not only is he saying that humans aren't alone in the universe, he's saying that God put other creatures there as well. This is a hard deduction to make at the time- another leading Catholic scholar and philosopher came to the conclusion that extraterrestrials could not exist, because if they did they wouldn't be men, and if they weren't men (sons of Adam), then they would require salvation (because God is merciful). If they required salvation, they would need an 'alien Jesus Christ,' and this would violate the uniqueness of Christ, something that just couldn't be done. So you see, Fontenelle was a bit of a revolutionary.
Questions:
Did Fontenelle really intend to challenge humanity's uniqueness the way he did?
What sort of beliefs did Fontenelle have on the necessity of salvation of the aliens he had posited?
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