PFSCL L, 99 DOI 10. / PFSCL-2023-0020 From an Enclosed Universe to the Cartesian Vortex: Pascal’s, La Fontaine’s and Fontenelle’s Literary Representation of the Universe 1 J IANI F AN T SINGHUA U NIVERSITY , B EIJING Introduction In Pascal’s Pensées, the silence of the plural worlds after the concealment of God from the universe instills human beings with a sense of transcendental homelessness. Pascal’s sections embody the obsoleteness of an anthropocentric arrogance that humans can endow the universe with transcendental structure through their form-giving perception. Instead, from an anthropological perspective, Pascal witnesses an ungraspable explosion of the created cosmos into plurality in the wake of Copernicus’ and Bruno’s affirmation of new cosmologies. From a psychological perspective, humans undergo a distressing shift from a self-conceit based on a geocentric and a concomitant anthropocentric perception of the universe to some kind of existential crisis. From a soteriological perspective, after God conceals Himself from the universe, humans suffer from a nihilistic anguish, since contemplation of the universe no longer gives them any access to God. This is due to the decentralized views of the earth since the Copernican heliocentric system and other cosmic pluralisms and the consequential de-anthropocentrism and the potential absence of God in the universe. This paper demonstrates that this kind of existential crisis for humanity has been evidenced in Pascal’s depiction of alienation, and other philosophical and religious nuances. As a rigorously trained scientist who later converted himself to Christianity, Pascal dismantled supremacy of scientific knowledge on human conditions and devoted himself more to apologetics. Therefore, he is very savvy in giving a meticulous and convincing description of the cosmos in his Pensées 1 My research on this article was supported by Tsinghua University Initiative Scientific Research Program. Jiani Fan PFSCL L, 99 DOI 10. / PFSCL-2023-0020 300 and in echoing contemporaneous scientific discourses. These discourses constitute a psychological and even a spiritual direction for his readers. In other words, through demonstrating the unfathomable plurality of worlds and the infinite universe, his readers go through fear and shuddering. Only Christian discourses of cosmogeny and soteriology can solve the existential predicament for his readers. Different from Pascal, this cosmic pluralism does not trigger any sense of alienation for La Fontaine and he is nonchalant regarding its potential existential crisis depicted by Pascal. Subsequent to cosmic pluralism advocated by Bruno and other contemporary scholars, La Fontaine’s fable resorts to Democritean atomic cosmology in a composed manner. La Fontaine, a freethinker and libertine among atheists, a modern Epicurean, cherishes freethinking related to religious and moral issues. Since he does not cherish a staunch belief in God as the ultimate Creator in the cosmogony, La Fontaine endorses Democritus’ atomic components of the universes. Moreover, fable as a fictional literary genre and the parodic tone of his fable on Democritus render his attitude towards pagan cosmic plurality less objectionable for church authorities. Fontenelle, a skeptic regarding cosmic pluralism and the subsequent soteriological discourses, well versed in Descartes’ Vortex theory and astronomy, prefers to suspend his judgment on religious discourses and embrace scientific methods. Fontenelle’s accessible treatment of scientific disputes under the disguise of gallant literature facilitates him to disseminate hard-core cosmic pluralism based on Cartesian vortex among a large public. Intriguingly, he gives several accounts of the potential existence of extraterrestrial inhabitants in the register of probabilism instead of empirical evidence, which is unavailable or limited. Regarding this probabilism, Aristotle maintains that a probabilistic argument is the most pertinent method: “unlike the historian, the poet is not obliged to render truthfully what happens or has happened: he rather depicts what is probable and may happen” (Poetics,1451a-1451b5). His recourse to probabilism regarding plural worlds is very ingenious, because many issues related to cosmology are not demonstrable but can only be grasped by speculation, due to the limitation of human and mechanical organs. Thus, he justifies his application of fictional dialogues in the mode of probability to a scientific inquiry. Section one: “Center Everywhere, Circumference Nowhere” in the Infinite Universe In this section, we investigate Pascal’s cosmological conception of an infinite universe with center everywhere and circumference nowhere. From an Enclosed Universe to the Cartesian Vortex PFSCL L, 99 DOI 10. / PFSCL-2023-0020 301 Ancient and early modern theorists contend that God, instead of the universe, has center everywhere and circumference nowhere, because they believe in an omnipresent and infinite God. They adhere to Ptolemy’s geo-centrism and his conception of an enclosed and finite universe. Inspired by the Hermetic writer Hermes Trismegistus, many ancient, medieval, and early modern writers, such as the Neoplatonist Iamblichus, Rabelais, and Madame de Gournay, contend that the phrase “an infinite sphere whose center is everywhere and circumference nowhere” refers to the omnipresent God. They deem God as a perfect and infinite circle, because He situates Himself beyond the confines of time and space. Since this circle is immense and boundless, everywhere can be considered its center and therefore it is not enclosed by any circumference (De Gandillac 1943: 32-34). The Neoplatonists cherish a very optimistic view of humans, because they contain the sparks of divine immanence in their soul. Therefore, the infinite divinity is intelligible and accessible to us, as His most outstanding creatures, through contemplating the marvelous universe. Nevertheless, appropriating this banal phrase inherited from his predecessors, Pascal attributes the infinite sphere to Nature, instead of God Himself (De Gandillac 1943: 35-44). Pascal’s own account of the hidden God (deus absconditus) can be used as a justification for his refusal to ascribe the infinite universe to God. Impenetrable for human beings, after concealing Himself in the infinite universe and from human sight, God scarcely reveals Himself to humans. He imposes on humans an existential anxiety of solitude in the infinite universe. In consequence, humans will reject their previously overconfident assumption of themselves as privileged creatures compared to other beings. Therefore, they should humbly engage themselves with the constant search for Him and relish the merit in believing Him. Pascal explains this idea in his letter to Mademoiselle de Roannez: If God could be discovered Himself continually by men, there would be no merit in believing Him; and if He never discovered himself, there would be little faith. But He usually hides Himself, and rarely reveals Himself to those He wants to engage in his service. This strange secret, in which God has withdrawn, impenetrable in the sight of men, is a great lesson to carry us to loneliness far from the sight of men (Pascal, Lettres à Charlotte de Roannez, 1656, Pascal 1991: 1035-1036 2 ). Although nature still retains the intelligible marks of the omnipotent and omnipresent God, our perception and even our imagination can no longer grasp nor decipher this sublime and enigmatic image of God only through 2 This English translation is my own. Most of the English translations of the quotations from Pascal’s work are Honor Levi’s (Pascal 1999), expect those otherwise indicated. Jiani Fan PFSCL L, 99 DOI 10. / PFSCL-2023-0020 302 contemplating the universe. Many Christian apologists reject earthly pleasure that eudaimonia refers to. Instead, they direct human sights towards contemplation of God for other-worldly consolation. In Pascal’s view, different from Christian apologists, many ancient pagan philosophers indulge themselves in this eudaimonia, but never seek for other-worldly consolation. Pascal finds fault with the correlation between contemplation (theoria) and eudaimonia among many Greek and Roman philosophers, especially the Stoics and the Epicureans: Without this divine knowledge how could men help feeling either exalted at the persistent inward sense of their past greatness …? For unable to see the whole truth, they could not attain perfect virtue. With some regarding nature as incorrupt, others as irremediable, they have been unable to avoid either pride or sloth, the twin sources of all vice … For if they realized man’s excellence, they did not know his corruption, with the result that they certainly avoided sloth but sank into pride, and if they recognized the infirmity of nature, they did not know its dignity, with the result that they were certainly able to avoid vanity, only to fall headlong into despair. Hence the various sects of Stoics and Epicureans, Dogmatists and Academicians, etc. (Lafuma 208 / Sellier 240). Through contemplating the universe or the divine for their own selfinterested human flourishing and this-worldly happiness, for Pascal, the Stoics and the Epicureans, are complacent about their insights into natural laws and cosmological principles. They adopt, in fact, a nonchalant attitude towards the theory of the universe per se. These philosophers brandish the slogan of humans as the measure of all things that they inherited from Protagoras. They address anthropocentric concerns such as how to achieve a tranquil life and how to soothe our fear and anxiety through gripping the essence and laws of the universe. Thus, they can avoid natural disasters by virtue of this knowledge. Regarding this, Pascal disparages the ancient Epicureans’ smugness and self-aggrandizement. He casts his skepticism on their devotion to scientific investigation for the purpose of laying bare the enigmatic nature and subjugating the nature to human wellbeing. Under the banner of Francis Bacon’s “torturing nature in order that the nature reveals itself,” 3 this self-confidence of subjugating the universe through scientific 3 About Bacon’s claim of the torture of nature, Carolyn Merchant contends that for Bacon, early modern science “treats nature as a female to be tortured through mechanical inventions” and “strongly suggests the interrogations of the witch trials and the mechanical devices used to torture witches.” Through putting torturing nature and the witch trials in parallel, “the interrogation of witches as symbol for the interrogation of nature, the courtroom as model for its inquisition, and torture through mechanical devices as a tool for the subjugation of disorder were funda- From an Enclosed Universe to the Cartesian Vortex PFSCL L, 99 DOI 10. / PFSCL-2023-0020 303 inquiry has also been embraced and even augmented among many early modern scientists, especially by resorting to mechanical inventions such as telescopes and microscopes. Because of this fatal arrogance of conceiving the nature as corrupted and disregarding its dignity, in Pascal’s view, these ancient philosophers and early modern scientists boastfully inflate their own self-confidence, but they are unaware of their own corrupted nature. Sarcastically, using a similar geometrical metaphor of centers and circumferences to depict conflicting desires as clashing spheres, Pascal also alludes to a puffed-up pride and an insatiable lust for domination (libido dominandi) among postlapsarian human beings: It is unjust in itself for making itself center of everything: it is a nuisance to others in that it tries to subjugate them, for each self is the enemy of all the others and would like to tyrannize them (Lafuma 597 (série XXIV) / Sellier 494). When everyone wants to be the unique center, multiple selves cannot tolerate the existence of other centers. This concupiscence causes conflicts among selfcentered selves. For this reason, early modern libertines, such as Mitton, adopt a psychological and rhetorical tyranny to subjugate others. Mitton conceals his own egoistic motivations for the purpose of being loved by all, under the guise of flattery in his dialogues with his interlocutors. More lamentably, many inquisitive scientists are stirred by a self-obsessed curiosity (libido sciendi) and an intemperate conceit of the human consciousness. Libido sciendi, one type of concupiscence that Augustine condemns, refers to the transgression of human cognitive boundary. Tempted by an excessive curiosity, scientists engage themselves with natural science, and deviate their attention from religious devotion, which can remedy their disordered desire to know. 4 As Jean Mesnard insightfully remarks, this curiosity impels humans to unravel recklessly the secrets of nature, which ought to be contemplated silently and with an awestruck reverence (Mesnard 1993: 237). mental to the scientific method as power.” See Carolyn Merchant. “The Violence of Impediments: Francis Bacon and the Origins of Experimentation.” Isis 99.4 (2008), p. 732, n.3. 4 See Philippe Sellier. Pascal et saint Augustin. Paris : Colin, 1970, p. 175 and Saint Augustin, De vera religione, XXXVIII, 71, p. 129. Jiani Fan PFSCL L, 99 DOI 10. / PFSCL-2023-0020 304 Section Two: Pascal’s Epistemological Skepticism About Ptolemaic, Copernican and Bruno’s Cosmology and His Alternative Apologetic Cosmology Under the pretext of the will to truth but actually motivated by the lust for domination, Scientists and Catholic Church authorities investigate the universe and relentlessly accuse each other’s theories of the universe. In this section, we investigate how Pascal adopts an epistemological and even psychological skepticism against these conflicting discourses on cosmology, be they Ptolemy’s geocentric model of universe which has been fanatically embraced by the Church authorities, Copernican conception of Heliocentrism, or Bruno’s decentered multiple universes. After Pascal has dismantled these secular scientific accounts of cosmology, facing the invisible hidden God, his interlocutors are in the confrontation of the eternal silence of the plural worlds in the universe. This unsettling sublimity not only causes his interlocutors to fear and to tremble due to their dethronement from anthropocentrism and their feeling of transcendental homelessness, but also triggers them to marvel at the microscopic and microscopic cosmoses as a preliminary condition for apologists’ therapy of their desire. First, we probe into Pascal’s epistemological skepticism with regard to the dominant cosmological discourses of his epoch: When we humanly discuss the movement or the stability of the earth, all the phenomena of the movements and retrogradations of the planets follow perfectly from the hypotheses of Ptolemy, Tycho, Copernicus and many others who can do, of which only one can be true. But who will dare to make such a great discernment, and who will be able, without danger of error, to support one to the detriment of the others, ... without making himself ridiculous? (Pascal, Lettre au P. Noël, Pascal 1990: 524 5 ). In this paragraph, Pascal employs the Academic Skeptic’s method of arguing pro and con and thus cancels his predecessors’ arguments by exposing and opposing each other’s arguments. Undeniably, we conceive both geocentric model of the universe and the Heliocentrism from our self-centered view resulting from our own specific standpoint. Pascal exposes his readers to equally convincing pro and con arguments, creating an intellectual impasse. The reader becomes confused about their previous conviction in these dogmatic principles. This Academic Skeptic method stirs up a desire for true certainty in his readers’ soul. This intellectual impasse introduced by the Academic Skeptics has a “protreptic function,” which refers to “an utterance designed to instruct and persuade” (Force 2001). The impasse therefore opens 5 This English translation is my own. From an Enclosed Universe to the Cartesian Vortex PFSCL L, 99 DOI 10. / PFSCL-2023-0020 305 a space in readers’ mind for the introduction of new perspectives. Before delving deeply into Pascal’s new apologetic perspective, we should take a glance at the cosmological models which are susceptible to Pascal’s objection. In Ptolemy’s geocentric account of the enclosed universe, stars move around the earth. Moon is the closest to earth, then Mercury, Sun, and Mars are also circling around the earth, either clockwise or counterclockwise. In this world picture, the earth is static in the center, the other stars are also containers of the entire universe, and the spheres are solid and not transparent. Celestial map of the Ptolemaic system From Andreas Cellarius’ Harmonia Macrocosmica, 1660 On the contrary, in the Copernican heliocentrism, the earth revolves around its own axis and moves around the sun. Consequentially, Copernicus decenters earth in the cosmological narrative and attributes the illusion of its previous central position to our own quest for human sovereignty out of our own self-love. For Copernicus, our specific perception and conception of the cosmological system are derived from our position of observing the stars on Jiani Fan PFSCL L, 99 DOI 10. / PFSCL-2023-0020 306 the earth. This perception ignores the intrinsic spheric movement of the earth for twenty-four hours daily. Celestial map of the Copernican system From Andreas Cellarius’ Harmonia Macrocosmica, 1660 The shift of how one explains the phenomenon demonstrates the contingency of our self-claimed scientific and objective account of the universe. The observational data derived from where one stands constitutes only some circumstantial evidence. In other words, they are based on the relationality between a spectator and her observed spheres. This arbitrary deployment of the center caused by different observers’ perception in the whole universe can also be substantiated by fictional narratives contemporary to Pascal, such as the viewpoints of the extraterrestrial creatures fabricated by Kepler in his Somnium (1634) and the cosmic journey by Cyrano de Bergerac in The Other World: Comical History of the States and Empires of the Moon (1657). In these narratives, through optical geotropism of space travel and exchanging perspectives with alien creatures, these authors create an effect of defamiliarization of the world. This contingency of our observation makes Pascal’s phrase “an infinite sphere whose center is everywhere and circumference nowhere” susceptible to a shift from the physical multicentral universe to a polycentral universe perceived by scattered epistemological centers. Never- From an Enclosed Universe to the Cartesian Vortex PFSCL L, 99 DOI 10. / PFSCL-2023-0020 307 theless, in Pascal’s assessment, these two opposed models are both confined by the limitedness of our organs, even if telescope is applied as an extension of them and as a remediation of our defected corporeal organs. These two models demonstrate the expansion of our insatiable desire to comprehend and to grasp all after our downfall caused by relishing the Apple of Wisdom. Regarding this downfall, in the only existing fragment that Pascal mentions Copernicus in his Pensées, Pascal devaluates any investigation into the Copernican doctrine: Beginning. Dungeon. I agree that Copernicus’ opinion need not be more closely examined. But this: It affects our whole life to know whether the soul is mortal or immortal (Lafuma 164 / Sellier 196). The two points of view, from the earth and from the other planets, for Pascal, are only staging the interplay of the two perceptions, but cannot grasp nor demonstrate the intrinsic properties of the universe as they are. In this deanthropocentric world, when deviating themselves from the omniscient God, human beings can only obtain some pseudo-knowledge of the universe constructed by our own limited perceptions imprisoned in the dungeon. After evacuating Copernicus’ idea from his interlocutors, especially those who advocate for Aristotelian and Ptolemian geo-centrism and the concomitant egocentrism, Pascal introduces a new conception of the universe and a new perspective of evaluating the universe. He draws on and then supersedes Giordano Bruno’s cosmic picture of an infinite universe and multiple worlds. Bruno’s cosmology rejects the Copernican enclosed and finite universe with fixed numbers of stars, although in Copernicus’ conception, these stars are extending the limited numbers of existing spheres infinitely outwards. Instead, Bruno envisages an explosion of the centers of the multiple spheres scattered in the infinite universe. Consequently, given the multiple centers dispersed in the whole universe, Bruno also repudiates to attribute the sovereign ontological status to Sun or Earth as the center of the spheres, around which previously in the Copernican model other planets rotate. Therefore, he deprives Earth or Sun of any ontological supremacy or exceptional finality, since God has also created infinitely analogous planets in the multiple spheres. Bruno claims, God as the primary mover of this genesis of the universe, infuses the universe with His own intelligent soul, “as a principle of motion” (Copernicus 1985: Chap. I,8) . Jiani Fan PFSCL L, 99 DOI 10. / PFSCL-2023-0020 308 Frontispiece to Johann Christoph Gottsched’s Erste Gründe der gesamten Weltweisheit (First Foundations of Philosophy in its Entirety, 1 st edition, 1733), which is modeled after Bruno’s multiple spheres in the infinite universe In his short story, Jorge Luis Borges contends that after Bruno had delivered his fervent eulogy of the infinite universe, “seventy years later there was no reflection of that fervor left and men felt lost in space and time… the absolute space which had meant to liberation to Bruno, became a labyrinth and an abyss for Pascal.” Universe became “a fearful sphere, whose center is everywhere and whose circumference nowhere” (Borges 1964a: 189-192; Harries 1975: 5). Because of the omnipresence of God’s intelligent soul in the universe, Bruno, echoing Pascal’s phrase, affirms that the universe has multiple centers, but circumference nowhere. With a pantheistic vision, Bruno identifies God From an Enclosed Universe to the Cartesian Vortex PFSCL L, 99 DOI 10. / PFSCL-2023-0020 309 with the universe by diffusing the universal soul equally into each individual sphere. Contrarily, Pascal announces God’s concealment from the universe. This causes a nihilistic despair, fear and trembling among his interlocutors, due to the sudden collapse of their mainstay of existential significance. Imitating his interlocutors’ reaction to the aftermath of the cosmological and epistemological shift from an enclosed universe to an infinite cosmos, Pascal depicts the psychological shock caused by the labyrinths and abysses of infinity and nothingness in the macroscopic cosmos and the microscopic realms: Anyone who considers himself in this way will be terrified at himself, and, seeing his mass, as given him by nature, supporting him between these two abysses of infinity and nothingness, will tremble at these marvels … (Lafuma 199/ Sellier 230). We are floating in a medium of vast extent, always drifting uncertainly, blown to and fro … We burn with desire to find a firm footing, an ultimate, lasting base on which to build a tower rising up to infinity, but our whole foundation cracks and the earth opens up into the depth of the abyss (Lafuma 199/ Sellier 230). These “abysses of infinity and nothingness” correlate with the abysses and irremediable apertures in human beings’ faculties of perception and consciousness, as finite and ephemeral beings, compared to the eternal and omnipresent God. As Augustine confesses the human weakness regarding her consciousness: “To Your (God’s) eyes, the abyss of human consciousness is naked.” (55 Cf. ibid. 4.14.23: grande profundum est ipse homo. Conf. 10.2.2; trans. Chadwick). Because of our limited perceptive and rational faculties, we cannot grasp the two infinites of the infinitesimal and the undefinable magnitude. Therefore, we lose our firm foothold in front of the downfall of the previously self-claimed anthropocentric framework of the cosmology. In confrontation with the two unseizable infinities in the post-Copernican epoque, we fall into the pitfalls of vacancy and fail in the ambitious pursuit of building the Babel tower. Previously, we attempted to build the tour to reach the heaven and standardize human languages that God confused as a punishment of human arrogance. Nevertheless, the infinite universe indicates the impossibility of attaining the heaven and the multiple worlds predetermine the estranged status of languages not only among human beings but also between human beings and extraterrestrial creatures. Facing the inevitable downfall of the tower, we lament that “our whole foundation cracks and the earth opens up into the depth of the abyss” (Lafuma 199/ Sellier 230). Dismayed at the transition from the closed world to the infinite universe, without a stable anchoring or a shelter, we are in permanent exile in the infinite universe after being dethroned from a collapsing anthropocentric Jiani Fan PFSCL L, 99 DOI 10. / PFSCL-2023-0020 310 kingdom into abysses. Disoriented, we undergo a distressing experience of transcendental homelessness. In this post-Bruno context of the infinite universe, the transcendental homelessness refers to a kind of nihilism caused by the banishment of a geocentric universe from the cosmological narratives and the accompanying devaluation and even annihilation of previously human-oriented teleological narratives. Therefore, libertines, who are freethinkers in matters of religion and morality and one of the main targets of Pascal’s apologetics, utter an awe-inspired cry of their anguish “the eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me” (Lafuma 201 / Sellier 233). Now, new infinite numbers of spaces were affirmed by Giordano Bruno, in which the infinite universes were created by the supersubstantial God, who is unknowable and cannot be grasped directly through our senses (BOL I.1, 242- 247; Knox 2019). Confronted with this super-substantial principle and cause of all things, the libertines were intimidated by the collapse of their cosmological system and anguished about the silence. The silence is a symptom of the banishment of their own Epicurean gods from the universe who previously “give utterance with voices of a dignity to match their splendid appearance and great strength” (Lucretius 5.1161-1225; Long & Sedley 1987: 139) to attentive human ears. Regarding literary registers, this transcendental homelessness also harbingers the invalidation of “the old parallelism of the transcendental structure of the form-giving subject and the world of created forms” (Lukács 1987: 46). In other words, the explosion of the geocentric cosmos into an infinite universe also leads to an indefinite universe. The form of the universe, although not necessarily being amorphous, cannot be given a clear structure nor a definite circumference, although a disqualified human subject always harbors a compulsion for a form-giving and all-comprehensive narrative from her own narcissistic perspective. In term of this, Pascal’s fragmentary sections give a most appropriate account of humans’ expatriation from their sovereignty in a human-centered universe fabricated by their previously false consciousness. Therefore, human beings feel a kind of solitude and alienation. As Pascal cherishes a naturalistic account of the things in the universe, he inveighs against our anthropocentric impulse of tainting things with “our qualities and stamp(ing) our own composite being on all the simple things we contemplate” (Lafuma 199 / Sellier 230), because this mistake contaminates the purity of the things that we contemplate, in this context, the universe. Due to the abyss in human consciousness, in Pascal’s view, the abyss of the two infinites in the universe, causes us not only to tremble, but also to marvel. Following the transcendental impulse to Platonize the universe, as James Porter claims, many Christian authors also use natural sublimity as a sacred psychological technique for spiritual guidance towards Christian From an Enclosed Universe to the Cartesian Vortex PFSCL L, 99 DOI 10. / PFSCL-2023-0020 311 beliefs (Porter 2016: 115). In several paragraphs of Pascal’s section “Disproportion of Human Beings” cited above, Pascal depicts the transformative effects for humans in their confrontation with abyss from a sensation of depression to a sense of elevation to sublimity by the divine Grace. It is noteworthy that the section “Disproportion of Human Beings” belongs to the liasse “Transition of Knowledge of Man to Knowledge of God” (« Transition de la Connaissance de l’Homme à Dieu ») and is located before the constellation of fragments entitled “God” in Pascal’s own table of contents. Human anthropological status is situated in the transitional position from an inconstant miserable creature to a blessed receiver of divine Grace. Pascal elaborates on it further, especially through the psychological transcendence of sublimity: I want to show him a new abyss. I want to depict to him not only the visible universe, but all the conceivable immensity of nature enclosed in this miniature atom … For whom will not marvel that our body, a moment ago imperceptible in a universe, itself imperceptible in the bosom of the whole, should now be a colossus, a world, or rather a whole, compared to the nothingness beyond our reach? … I believe that with his curiosity changing into wonder he will be more disposed to contemplate them in silence than investigate them with presumption. (Sellier 230) The miniature atom, as a mirroring image of the macroscopic universe, encloses multiple worlds and an infinite universe like the celestial constellations. As James Porter penetratingly points out, the idea of God’s sublimity, which is embodied in abyssal realms, has far resonance with some late antique Church Fathers. In his Funeral Oration on Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nazianzus proclaims: “I am persuaded not to stand still at the letter nor simply to gaze at the things above, but to penetrate further and advance into the depth ( β θ χωρ β θ ) of the depth, calling one abyss after another abyss, and finding light through light, until I reach the farthest one.” A glimpse into the subterranean and infinitesimal realms 6 See Laurent Thirouin. « Transition de la connaissance de l’homme à Dieu : examen d’une liasse des Pensées ». In Dominique Descotes, Antony McKenna et Laurent Thirouin (dir.). Le rayonnement de Port-Royal. Paris : Champion, 2001, p. 351-368. 7 Translated by Papaioannou, S. Michael Psellos: Rhetoric and Authorship in Byzantium. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2013, p.93. See James I Porter. The Sublime in antiquity. Cambridge University Press, 2016, p. 22, n.63. As Porter observes, this can be the Church Father’s appropriation of Lucretius’ abyssal and atomic cosmology: For as soon as thy philosophy, springing from thy godlike soul, begins to proclaim aloud the nature of things, the terrors of the mind fly away, the walls of the world part asunder, I see things moving on through all the void. The majesty Jiani Fan PFSCL L, 99 DOI 10. / PFSCL-2023-0020 312 exposes our sensual faculties to the abundance of incalculable elements. These infinitesimal elements constitute firmaments, earth, and stars and echo the celestial bodies, which human mind cannot fathom. It is the grandeur of the multitude of divine creation surpassing our comprehension that fascinates and shocks us. Nevertheless, at the same time, when we zoom out, we feel reassured because our body can be perceived as an imposing colossal in comparison with the infinitesimal worlds. And thus, we gain a sense of our own dignity. Referring to the sublime, Pascal delivers a eulogy of Christianity: For it teaches the righteous, whom it exalts, even to participation in divinity itself, that in this sublime state they still bear the source of all corruption, which exposes them throughout their lives to error, misery, death and sin … it so nicely tempers fear with hope through this dual capacity, common to all men, for grace and sin, that it causes infinitely more dejection than mere reason, but without despair, and infinitely more exaltation than natural pride, but without puffing us up. (Lafuma 208 / Sellier 240) In confrontation with the physical and existential abysses, Pascal ardently asserts two bolstering anchorages of certainty in our floating existence, God of Jesus Christ and intriguingly, the greatness of the human soul: Certainty, certainty, heartfelt, joy, peace. God of Jesus Christ. God of Jesus Christ. My God and your God. “Thy God shall be my God.” The world forgotten, and everything except God. He can only be found by the ways taught in the Gospels. Greatness of the human soul (Lafuma 913/ Sellier 742). Jean Mesnard asserts a connection between the last two versets, because the greatness of the human soul contains sparks of divinity, and it is an endowment by God’s mercy (Pascal 1991: 44-46). This grandeur of human soul cannot be confused with the human presumption which deems human beings has an equal force and ontological status as God. As a rational faculty attributed to human beings by God, Pascal asserts that “thinking makes the grandeur of a human being,” as embodied by the metaphor of the thinking reed: of the gods is revealed . . . At these things, as it were, some godlike pleasure and a thrill of awe seizes on me” (3.14-29; trans. Bailey,1910). From an Enclosed Universe to the Cartesian Vortex PFSCL L, 99 DOI 10. / PFSCL-2023-0020 313 Thinking reed. It is not in space that I must seek my human dignity, but in the ordering of my thought. It will do me no good to own land. Through space the universe grasps me and swallows me up like a speck; through thought I grasp it. (Sellier 231) In French moralists’ teachings, reed is a moralized metaphor, which refers to “a listless and feeble human, who yields easily, who has no firmness in his resolutions, who is a reed that bends to all winds” (Dictionnaire de L’Académie française). Pascal’s spiritual director, Monsieur de Sacy admitted that human beings, in their postlapsarian miserable condition, are swinging with wind and are agitated by their insatiable and disconcerting concupiscence. More deplorably, the whole universe, due to its unlimited spatial extensiveness and its eternality, cannot only engulf an ephemeral human as a speck, but can also crush him. Even without enlisting the whole universe to “take up arms to crash him,” although man is “a thinking reed,” “a vapor, a drop of water is enough to kill him” (Lafuma 200 / Sellier 231). Because of his own inconstancy, a human being is easily susceptible to any agitation. An inconsequential cause can reshuffle the whole geopolitical landscape, such as the imagined deformation Cleopatra’s nose by a bit would deprive her of Mark Antony’s love and would then decisively change the destiny of the Roman empire. Nevertheless, this figurative image embodying human feebleness can be transformed into a metaphor of a sturdy pillar in a soteriological narrative, thanks to the sacrifice of Jesus Christ for humans: “It is true that they are themselves nothing but reeds, which can be stirred by the slightest wind. But if a reed is only weakness in the hand of a man, it becomes firmer than a pillar in the hand of God” (De Sacy 1724: 316). Owing to the soteriological intention and the attentive hand of God, our intellect undergoes a transformative sublimation from the status of a wavering and fragile reed to a steadfast pillar. Our intellect, as a divine spark mirroring omniscience God, is urged by the Platonic impulse to transcend our confined corporeal status. In Pascal’s case, this intellect conceives purified and eternally valid geometrical forms when accounting for the infinite universe by the imagery of multiple centers and ever-extending circumference. At the same time, it purges sensual elements due to their contingency and malleability. Significantly, thanks to “a godlike power to transcend the finite” contained in her soul (Harries 1975: 10), human beings possess the competence of conceiving the nature as the infinite sphere without any fixed center. This competence indicates that they have already been endowed with the power to transcend their own perspectival restraints and to possess an a-perspective vision that can encompass the views from multicentral standpoints simultaneously. Jiani Fan PFSCL L, 99 DOI 10. / PFSCL-2023-0020 314 Section Three: Jean de La Fontaine and Pascal’s Assimilation of Democritean Atomic Cosmology Besides the prevalence of Ptolemy, Copernicus, and Bruno’s cosmological narratives, Democritus’ atomic cosmology has also triggered many criticisms in the early modern France. Many humanists and moralists attempt to appropriate it. In the fable “Democritus and the people of Abdera,” (Book 8, Fable 26) in the vein of a sarcastic praise of Democritus’ folly, Jean de La Fontaine caricatures laymen’s accusation of Democritus’ madness and their amateurish but revealing apprehension of his cosmology in front of Hippocrates: “Our citizen,” said the spokesman with tears in his eyes, “has lost his wits, alas! Study has corrupted Democritus. If he were less wise, we should esteem him much more. He will have it that there is no limit to the number of worlds like ours and that possibly they are inhabited with numberless Democrituses. Not satisfied with these wild dreams, he talks also of atoms—phantoms born only in his own empty brain …” (La Fontaine 2010: 78) The laymen’s lampoon of Democritus lies in a parody of his cosmology: since Democritus claims the multiple worlds like the earth, by deduction, there should also be numberless Democrituses dwelling on these worlds. According to W. K. C. Guthrie’s survey, Democritus is commonly considered the first Greek philosopher to attribute microcosm to human beings in ancient times. This Greek term microcosm connotates a well-organized world in contrast with a disordered chaos. The only attested literature that bears witness to this argument, according to Guthrie’s investigation, is a Christian Neoplatonist, David the Armenian’s text, “even so in man, who according to Democritus is a little world” (David, Prol. 38.14(Democri.fr.34); Guthrie 1962: 471). In light of Democritus’ own atomic assumption of the universe, this statement is well grounded, because the universes and Democrituses are consubstantial cosmoses composed of atoms and follow the same atomic laws in their cosmogony and ontology. Therefore, in Democritus’ conception, the multiple universes not only juxtapose with each other in parallels, but also interlock with each other. Ridiculing the people of Abdera as fools, as the foolishness of the Abderians was proverbial among the ancients and even assented in some nineteenth-century texts (cnrtl.fr), La Fontaine insinuates the theory of multiplicity worlds and the possible inhabitants in other universes into his fable. Meanwhile, as a fictional genre, fable also rescues him from the persecution due to the religious and scientific conflicts about these theories at that time. From an Enclosed Universe to the Cartesian Vortex PFSCL L, 99 DOI 10. / PFSCL-2023-0020 315 In the section “Disproportion of Human Beings,” Pascal speculates on and depicts this corresponding and interlocking status between multiple microcosmoses and microcosmoses in a more realistic and elaborated fashion: Let him see there an infinity of universes, each with its firmament, its planets, its earth, in the same proportions as in the visible world, and on that earth animals, and finally mites in which he will find again the same results as in the first; and finding the same thing yet again in the others without end or respite, he will be lost in such wonders, as astounding in their minuteness as the others in their amplitude. (Lafuma 199/ Sellier 230) In the same vein of Democritus, Pascal demonstrates that microcosmoses encompass similar microcosmoses and microcosmoses containing infinitely small universes, like Russian nesting dolls. These universes contain the same creatures. Unlike Democritus’ pure speculation, this observation has been attested by the empirical evidence provided by the mechanical extension of human organs, such as telescopes and microscopes, in Pascal’s time. In Jorge Luis Borges’ estimation, Pascal may instead draw on Anaxagoras’ everythingin-everything principle that “in everything there is a share of everything” and thus these identical universes include each other (Borges 1964b: 100). Nevertheless, as a Christian apologist who believes in God as the ultimate Creator in the cosmogony, Pascal does not endorse Democritus’ atomic components of the universes. Jiani Fan PFSCL L, 99 DOI 10. / PFSCL-2023-0020 316 Section Four: Cartesian Vortex and Extraterrestrial Creatures in Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle’s Plural Worlds Plurality of Worlds. Frontispiece from Entretiens sur la pluralité des mondes (Conversations on the Plurality of Worlds, 1686), by the French writer and philosopher Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle (1657-1757). Analogous to Bruno’s model of cosmos and atomic cosmology, Fontenelle’s fictional dialogue Conversations on the Plurality of Worlds also asserts the explosion of plurality of worlds in an infinite universe. Nevertheless, harboring a dissident scientific theory from his two predecessors, Fontenelle adduces the Cartesian theory of vortices to account for the plurality of worlds. More intriguingly, his assumption of the existence of extraterrestrial creatures which are not susceptible to the Christian soteriological narrative, causes conflicts with orthodox church doctrines about the salvation of Adam and his postlapsarian offspring by Jesus Christ. Moreover, From an Enclosed Universe to the Cartesian Vortex PFSCL L, 99 DOI 10. / PFSCL-2023-0020 317 although his epistemological skepticism which judges the veracity of an argument is strictly based on empirical evidence, his probabilistic argument unfolded in the conversations makes his scientific conviction about the cosmology more malleable and open to dispute. The Grand Cosmic Theatre, frontispiece of the 1686 Fontenelle’s Entretiens. Bibliothèque de l’Observatoire de Paris Fontenelle accuses many philosophers, probably implicitly referring to Aristotle, Plato, and Ptolemy, of purely speculating on Natural Philosophy based on the invisible and of devaluing what are visible, due to their curiosity and poor eyesight. Instead, Fontenelle compares the universe to an opera house. As the frontispiece of the 1686 edition of his Entretiens shows, Fontenelle strives to “draw back the curtain” (Fontenelle 1990: 11-12) and to reveal the hidden wires causing the movements of the universe in the watchlike mechanical systems behind the scenes. Intriguingly, Fontenelle no longer attributes these wires to the prime mover of a Christian God, nor to other mechanic systems in the Copernican heliocentric world, but to the Cartesian vortex. Pierre Connes assumes that the cumulus-like clouds, which create an effect of the irregular shape of the stars in the frontispiece “the grand cosmic theater,” only have a decorative function (Connes 2020: 313). Different from Jiani Fan PFSCL L, 99 DOI 10. / PFSCL-2023-0020 318 his supposition, I contend that through the art technique of -l’ these cumulus clouds embody three-dimensional vortices, ever-evolving constellations of stars and assembles of subtle and small air particles, instead of singular stars. The illustration in Descartes’ Principles, Pr. III 53, shows Descartes’ conception of the universe composed of vortex and the meandering line from N to 8 and upwards as a trajectory of a comet. The comets are merely planets that belong to a neighboring vortex. Their motion was toward the outer edges, but that vortex perhaps being differently compressed by those that surround it, is rounder on the top and flatter on the bottom, and it’s from the bottom that we see it. Those planets which have begun to move in a circle at the top do not foresee that at the bottom they’ll run out of vortex, because it’s as if it were crushed there. To continue their circular motion, they must enter into another vortex, which we’ll suppose is ours, and cut across its outer edges (Fontenelle 1990: 84). The uneven edges of the vortices are caused by the unequal pressures from other vortices adjoining one vortex. These pressures disfigure their form that is configured usually by their constant circular movements around the rotating central planet. This distortion of edges leads to the propensity of the From an Enclosed Universe to the Cartesian Vortex PFSCL L, 99 DOI 10. / PFSCL-2023-0020 319 matters, such as comets which are highlighted here, moving from one vortex to another due to the centrifugal force. This centrifugal force is resulted from the matter’s natural tendency to follow a straight force in a circular movement. When comets come to a vortex band after being pushed by this centrifugal force, a “radially-directed, outward tendency to flee the center of rotation” (Slowik 2017), they can be pulled into the circular movements of other vortices. The plural worlds composed of vortices are undergoing dynamic and perpetual reconfiguration. In the frontispiece illustrating the Entretiens above, we can see many smaller vortices insert themselves into the little empty space between two adjacent large vortices. Fontenelle’s text witnesses to this phenomenon: When two vortices that connect by their adjacent faces leave some slight void beneath where they meet, as must often happen, then Nature, who manages her territory well, will fill the void for you with a little vortex or two, perhaps with a thousand, that don’t inconvenience the others and still remain one, two, or a thousand systems more…I bet that although these little systems were only made to be thrown into the corners of the universe which could otherwise have been useless, and although they’re unknown to the other systems that touch them, they’re nonetheless quite content with themselves (Fontenelle 1990: 67). These little constellations of vortices constitute self-sufficient systems. Meanwhile, Nature keep on proliferating them, in order to immediately occupy the void. Because Descartes identifies extension with matter, he embraces the idea of the plenitude of the universe and the absence of void, which Fontenelle also advocates. These subtle and tiny matters which immediately fill the void, in the cartesian vortex theory, refer to ether. This theory of ether and vortices dispersing and occupying whole universes can find justifications in the Christian doctrine - the potentia or plenitude principle of God. Lovejoy explains this principle in detail: “no genuine potentiality of being can remain unfulfilled, that the extent and abundance of the creation must be as great as the possibility of existence and commensurate with the productive capacity of a ‘perfect’ and inexhaustible ‘Source,’ and that the world is better, the more things it contains” (Lovejoy 1960: 52). In the Fontenelle’s passage quoted above, Fontenelle capitalized the term, Nature. As the fountain of the genesis and the prime mover of the universe, the Nature can be referred to God. Thanks to His inexhaustible capacity of production, He fulfills this potentiality of His that should be fully fulfilled. That is why He fills the void between adjoining vortices with other matters and vortices to render the space useful. Nevertheless, these ever-proliferating vortices constitute mul- Jiani Fan PFSCL L, 99 DOI 10. / PFSCL-2023-0020 320 tiple worlds that potentially transgress the orthodox perception of the existence of only one geocentric enclosed universe in Christian soteriology. Like many theories of multiple worlds from ancient times to the early modern period, such as that of Democritus and Nicolas of Cusa, Fontenelle’s conception of plural worlds triggers controversies among Christians, especially due to his assumption of the existence of extraterrestrial creatures. Fontenelle delivers this message through the Marquise’ conjecture of the existence of creatures on Mercury, Venus, and Jupiter. The Marquise becomes more and more well versed in the subject of the plurality of universe after the male protagonist’s didactic inculcation (although this fiction of mansplaining is also questionable): “I understand,” said the Marquise, “that the weights of things regulate the ranks very well. Would to God that there were something similar to regulate us, which would fix people in those positions to which they’re suited by nature” (Fontenelle 1990: 54). The Marquise’s assumption has been approved by the male protagonist of the dialogues later, although neither the Marquise nor does he consent that these extraterrestrial creatures are necessarily human beings. Fontenelle admits the existence of extraterrestrial creatures, when he mocks Aristotle and Alexander’s attitude towards the potential inhabitants on the Moon. Aristotle’s geocentric universe asserts the finite space and eternal time, but rejects the idea of the existence of inhabitants in other planets. This vision has also been advocated by Christian Church Fathers for long time. Fontenelle teases Aristotle’s depletion of extraterrestrial inhabitants on the Moon on the grounds of ideological, instead of scientific concerns. Aristotle should have grasped all truth related to natural philosophy and should have rationally embraced the idea of an inhabited moon based on his predecessors’ serious and convincing argument. Nevertheless, catering to Alexander’s desire for domination and not frustrating his blind conceit that no patch of land is unconquerable by him, Aristotle keeps his conviction of lunar inhabitants in the back of his mind (Fontenelle 1990: 64). This allusion to an unwarranted political interference in scientific inquiry may also trigger Fontenelle’s contemporaries’ reflection on whether Christian ideology should override the empirical evidence derived from scientific investigations. Fontenelle’s Dialogues situate themselves within the framework of a series of fictional dialogues on cosmology. They are replete with many mythological and anecdotal elements. In these dialogues, Fontenelle conveys the messages of and his speculations on the potential existence of extraterrestrial inhabitants through the argumentative method of probabilism instead of scientific demonstration, although the protagonists cherish a very rigorous scientificism in their investigations. The signposts of probabilistic arguments, such From an Enclosed Universe to the Cartesian Vortex PFSCL L, 99 DOI 10. / PFSCL-2023-0020 321 as the terms, “fantasy,” “confide fantasies to the Moon and stars,” “something that resembled what one sees here on Earth”, and “imagination,” are manifests in the beginning paragraphs of the three dialogues held from the second to the fourth evening. These signposts in the general settings of each dialogue render them as verisimilar and probable, instead of being verifiable. It is remarkable that in the dialogue of the second evening, the male protagonist proposes the existence of inhabitants on the Moon through an analogy between the Moon and Earth: “The Moon is a world like the Earth, and apparently she is inhabited” (Fontenelle 1990: 23). This reasoning by analogy draws on the existing and accepted similarities between two propositions (the Earth and the Moon have similar physical features) and deduces further conclusion of similarities (Moon accommodates inhabitants just like the Earth) based on these accepted analogies. As ampliative reasoning, literarily to extend and add to something already known, the analogical argument boosts the probability of some hypotheses and urges us to take the conjecture more seriously (Bartha 2019). “Apparently” here can mean manifest to sight or so far as evidence indicates. It can also function as an indicator of probability since the conclusion may be altered, once we obtain a different optical perception or some amplified evidence. Fontenelle conducts his scientific skepticism by appealing to probability. He deters the dogmatic tendency in his way of speaking, by adding specific categories of modifiers and thus introduces a probabilistic mode of argument. This restrictive adverb also confines the legitimacy and veracity of the conclusion deduced from the analogy between the Moon and the Earth, which requires further empirical and optical evidence. The Marquise, contaminated by the previously authoritative false conception, believes that the inhabited Moon is only “a fantasy and a delusion” (Fontenelle 1990: 23). The male protagonist does not categorically deny the Marquise’s conviction, but partially consents to it by saying “This may be a fantasy too” (Fontenelle 1990: 23). Then, in the vein of ancient Skepticism, he assumes that he would suspend his judgement and not take sides in this issue, because “the uncertainty of what might happen makes one maintain contacts on the opposite side,” that is to say, the equipollence of equally convincing arguments and counterarguments. He confesses that he would shift to his opponents’ opinions honorably if their evidence could gain upper hand over his. This scientific skepticism testifies to his constant shifts of opinions about whether extraterrestrial creatures exist in the subsequent dialogues, based on optical or other scientific evidence. This strategy of arguments pro and con on one specific subject also constitutes one of the salient features of the probabilistic reasoning. Nevertheless, he temporarily assumes that their inhabitants dwell on the Moon based on the analogy Jiani Fan PFSCL L, 99 DOI 10. / PFSCL-2023-0020 322 between the Earth and the Moon, as well as a further analogy between the perception of Saint-Denis from Paris and the one of the Moon from the Earth. The probabilistic argument has been adopted by many writers, rhetoricians, and philosophers in the seventeenth century. It has been developed by Pierre Gassendi through his conception “libertas philosophandi (freedom of thought).” Libertas philosophandi aims to liberate humanist rhetoric from “perverse effects of dogmatism and the excessive obscurantism of the dialectics” that Gassendi elaborated on in the book I and II of his Exercitationes (Darmon 2006: 671). Aristotle distinguishes argument by probability from an apodeictic argument. The latter designates a demonstrative mode of syllogism producing scientific knowledge, which is justified and universally acknowledged. Aristotle explains how we obtain true scientific knowledge that is not subject to exception through a “scientific deduction” (apodeixis): we investigate “the cause why the thing is, that it is the cause of this, and that this cannot be otherwise” (Posterior Analytics I.2; Smith 2020). It is this kind of knowledge that the dogmatic philosophers would translate the dialogues into. As for moral and political issues, Aristotle maintains that probabilistic argument is the most pertinent method: “unlike historians, a poet is not obliged to render truthfully what happens or has happened: he rather depicts what is probable and may happen” (Poetics,1451a-1451b5). Intriguingly, Fontenelle transplants the probabilistic reasoning which is appropriate to arguing moral and historical issues to the domain of scientific inquiry, which should be regulated by apodeictic discourses. This probabilistic argument is also indispensable, because many new scientific fields that have been exploited in the seventeenth century, such as the questions of the features of alien creatures in other planets, are non-demonstrable (Aït- Touati 2011: 57). This shift also indicates the hybrid nature of the dialogues, which are simultaneously a quasi-scientific discourse and a fictional genre. The fiction adopts a probabilistic mode, so that it can replace the demonstrative mode due to lack of empirical evidence, and can also enhance the status of fiction to a scientific inquiry. As Frédérique Aït-Touati observes: “the probable discourse is not judged to be definitively either true or false, but rather according to the degrees on the scale of probability” (Aït-Touati 2011: 57). Moreover, this shift of rhetorical registers is conducive to disseminate scientific knowledge to laywomen and laymen, who are not strictly trained on syllogism. Later, the male protagonist furnishes further evidence to substantiate his probabilistic conviction of the existence of inhabitants in other planets, such as investigating their volatile movements, the genesis of vapor, and the potential existence of water on these planets. In the dialogue of the third evening, the male protagonist describes the potential scene of pervasive expansion of imperceptible animals on the Moon. From an Enclosed Universe to the Cartesian Vortex PFSCL L, 99 DOI 10. / PFSCL-2023-0020 323 He makes an analogue of the wide-spreading mites and other invisible animals, resembling the Pascaline depiction of the infinitely small worlds, to the existence of invisible and even subterraneous animals on the Moon. Due to the limited power of the telescope and microscope at the same time, the conviction of the invisible inhabitants on the Moon cannot be bolstered by optical evidence. Fontenelle once again substantiates this idea through the plenitude principle of God or Nature: “Can you believe that after she had pushed her fecundity here to excess, she’d been so sterile toward all other planets as not to produce anything living? ” (Fontenelle 1990: 45). The debates on whether extraterrestrial creatures exist and whether these alien inhabitants are human beings are recurring. They are involved with scientific and theological elaborations. In the Christian soteriology, Christ sacrificed Himself for the Original Sin committed by Adam and thus makes atonement for his offspring’s sins. If multiple extraterrestrial creatures exist in the plural worlds, are they also sinful? Should Christ be crucified and die many times both for human beings and other kinds of creatures? Bishop Wilkins (1641-1672), an Anglican clergyman and amateur scientist, attempts to find a solution to solve this dilemma, referring to Campanella’s Apologia pro Galileo: He (Campanella) cannot determine whether they were men or rather some other kind of creatures. If they were men, then he thinks they could not be infected with Adam’s sin; yet perhaps they had some of their own, which might make them liable to the same misery with us; out of which, it may be, they were delivered by the same means as we, the death of Christ; and thus he thinks that place of the Ephesians may be interpreted, where the Apostle says, God gathered all things together in Christ, both which are in earth, and which are in the heavens (Ephes. I, 10; Campanella 1662: Proposition VIII; McColley 1936: 427) Fontenelle’s probabilistic modes of argumentation and his implicit reference to the Plenitude Principle of God facilitate him to evade religious Inquisition. Nevertheless, controversially, in his preface to the Dialogues, he straightforwardly defies the legitimacy of the interference of religious authority with the conception of the plurality of worlds, because religion and scientific inquiry are two irrelevant domains. This blatant manifesto irritates church authorities, such as Bishop Wilkins’ reconciliation of the plurality of world theory and the Christian soteriology. Fontenelle does not subscribe himself to the soteriological doctrine, such as that of Bishop Wilkins, that God gathered all creatures, terrestrial and extraterrestrial, in Christ. More audaciously, he denies that the descendants of Adam have arrived at the Moon or sent colonies there. He further claims that the inhabitants on the Moon are not human beings, but other types of creatures. Therefore, Fontenelle’s con- Jiani Fan PFSCL L, 99 DOI 10. / PFSCL-2023-0020 324 tention of plurality of worlds and the existence of extraterrestrial beings make this book susceptible to put into the Catholic Church Index Librorum Prohibitorum, although it has been taken off from the Index several times later. Works Cited Aït-Touati, Frédérique. (2011). Fictions of the Cosmos. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 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