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ABSTRACT
This paper deals with the book Cosmotheoros (1698), in which Christiaan Huygens presented his concept of a universe made up of many inhabited planets. Recent interpreters of this work have focused especially on cosmological issues presented in the book. Cosmotheoros, however, comprises also various philosophical ideas. In this paper I want to focus on the concept contemplator coeli – stargazer. The stargazer was the embodiment of the philosophical ideal of the contemplative way of life that appeared in classical philosophy and astronomy. I want to argue that Huygens followed on from the idea of the stargazer and used it in his hypothetical construction of extra-terrestrial life. At the same time, however, he altered this idea in such a way that it corresponded better to the ideals of science at the end of the seventeenth century. In Huygens’ concept, the noble contemplator coeli turned into the modern scientist who works with other scientists on the advancement of mankind’s knowledge of nature. Huygens’ stargazers are a good example of how strikingly the basic assumptions of knowledge of nature in the early modern period changed with regard to classical antiquity.
Acknowledgements
I would like to express my gratitude to the anonymous reviewers for their helpful and detailed comments.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1 The standard biography available in English is Cornelis D. Andriesse, Huygens. The Man Behind the Principle (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005).
2 Cf. Huygens’ letters to his brother Constantyn from 1694 to 1695; see Christiaan Huygens, Œuvres complètes (La Haye: Nijhoff, 1888–1950) (further OC), vol. 10, p. 583, 703, 708.
3 Fréderique Aït-Touati, Fictions of the Cosmos. Science and Literature in the Seventeenth Century (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2011), 96–125; Jean Seidengart, Dieu, l’univers et la sphére infinie. Penser l’infinité cosmique á l’aubé de la science classique (Paris: Septentrion, 2006), 544–60; Ladina B. Lambert, Imagining Unimaginable. The Poetics of Early Modern Astronomy (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2002), 125–39; Steven J. Dick, Plurality of Worlds. Origins of the Extraterrestrial Life Debate from Democritus to Kant (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 128–36; Karl S. Guthke, Der Mythos der Neuzeit. Das Thema der Mehrheit der Welten in der Literatur- und Geistesgeschichte von der kopernikanischen Wende bis zur Science Fiction (Francke: Bern, 1983), 213–6; Eberhard Knobloch, ‘Vielheit der Welten – Extraterrestrische Evidenz’, in Ideale Akademie. Vergangene Zukunft oder konkrete Utopie?, ed. Wilhelm Vosskamp (Berlin: Akademie, 2002), 165–86; Rink Vermij, The Calvinist Copernicans. The Reception of the New Astronomy in the Dutch Republic, 1575–1750 (Amsterdam: Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2002), 151f.; and Andriesse, Huygens, 390–98.
4 R. H. Vermij and J. A. Van Maanen, ‘An Unpublished Autograph by Christiaan Huygens: His letter to David Gregory of 19 January 1694’, Annals of Science 49 (1992): 507–23, here p. 523.
5 Huygens à Leibniz, 29 mai 1694, OC X, 609.
6 See above all the texts included in volume 21 of Huygens’ Œuvres complètes: Que penser de Dieu?, Pensees meslees, De rationi imperviis, Réflexions sur la probabilité de nos conclusions et discussions de la question de l’existence d’ètres vivants sur les autres planètes, and Appendices. Joella G. Yoder and Gianfranco Mormino expressed doubts concerning the way in which editors of OC reproduced and organised Huygens’ manuscripts. In this article, I always follow the wording of OC without having ambitions to analyse differences between this text and the manuscripts. See Joella Yoder, ‘Introduction’, in Catalogue of the Manuscripts of Christiaan Huygens Including a Concordance With His Oeuvres Complètes, ed. Joella Yoder (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 3–20, especially 9–15; Gianfranco Mormino, ‘Sur quelques problèmes éditoriaux concernant l’ouvre de Christiaan Huygens’, Revue d’histoire des sciences 56 (2003): 145–51.
7 See, e.g. Joella G. Yoder, Unrolling Time. Christiaan Huygens and the Mathematization of Nature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988); Fabien Chareix, La philosophie naturelle de Christiaan Huygens (Paris: Vrin, 2006).
8 Fabien Chareix, ‘Le rationnel et le raisonnable. Sur un manuscrit de Christiaan Huygens: le De rationi Imperuijs (1690)’, in Le Savoir au XVIIe siècle, ed. John D. Lyons and Cara Welch (Gunter Narr Verlag: Tübingen, 2002), 335–44; Fabien Chareix, ‘Experientia ac ratio: L’oeuvre de Christiaan Huygens’, Revue d’histoire des sciences 56 (2003): 5–13.
9 Gianfranco Mormino, ‘Ammirare e comprendere: la concezione del sapere di Christiaan Huygens’, in Potentia Dei, ed. G. Canzani, Miguel A. Granada, and Yves Ch. Zarka (Angeli: Milano, 2000), 495–511 and Gianfranco Mormino, ‘Le rôle de Dieu dans l’oeuvre scientifique et philosophique de Christian Huygens’, Revue d’histoire des sciences 56 (2003): 113–33.
10 Patricia Radelet-de Grave, ‘L’universe selon Huygens, le connu et imaginé’, Revue d’histoire des sciences 56 (2003): 79–112.
11 Jan van der Schoot, ‘Interpreting the Cosmotheoros (1698): A Historiographical Essay on Theology and Philosophy in the Work of Christiaan Huygens’, De Zeventiende Eeuw 30 (2014): 20–39.
12 Cf. Aït-Touati, Fictions of the Cosmos, 125; Seidengart, Dieu, l’univers et la sphére infinie, 546; Andriesse, Huygens, 392.
13 Avertissement, in Huygens, Cosmotheros, OC 21, 656; Peter Probst, ‘Spectator coeli’, in Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie, ed. Joachim Ritter et al. (13 vols., Basel: Schwabe, 1971–2007), Vol. 9, cols. 1350–1355, here col. 1350f.
14 In this section I follow primarily Jens Pfeiffer, Contemplatio Caeli. Untersuchungen zum Motiv der Himmelsbetrachtung in lateinischen Texten der Antike und des Mittelalters (Hildesheim: Weidmann, 2001), pp. 24f., 36, 44, 54–57, 65, 70. Cf. Hans Blumenberg, ‘Contemplator coeli’, in Orbis scriptus. Dmitrij Tschizewskij zum 70. Geburstag, ed. Dieter Gerhardt (München: Fink, 1966), 113–24; Pierre Hadot, What is Ancient Philosophy, trans. Michael Case (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press), 77–90, 157–67; particularly for Stoics see Brad Inwood, ‘Why Physics?’ in God &Cosmos in Stoicism, ed. Ricardo Salles (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 201–23.
15 Lucius A. Seneca, De otio V,4; quoted from Lucius A. Seneca, On Leisure, trans. Gareth D. Williams, in Lucius A. Seneca, Hardship & Happiness (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2010), 225. Cf. the classical verses of Ovid: Pronaque cum spectent animalia cetera terram, / os homini sublime dedit caelumque videre / iussit et erectos ad sidera tollere vultus (Metamorphoses I, 84–86); cf. Cicero, De natura deorum II,56, 140.
16 Seneca, De otio V, 3.
17 Cicero, Tusculanae disputationes I, 25, 62.
18 Cicero, De natura deorum II, 61, 53: cognitio deorum – pietas – iustitia – virtutes – vita beata. Quoted from Marcus T. Cicero, De natura deorum. Academica, trans. Henry Rackham (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1937 = Loeb Classical Library 268), 271; similarly Tusculanae Disputationes I, 28, 68–70.
19 Hadot, What is Ancient Philosophy, 202–7.
20 Cicero, De natura deorum II, 56, 140; quoted from Cicero, De natura deorum. Academica, 257–9.
21 Claudius Ptolemy, Almagest, trans. Gerald J. Toomer (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998), 37. Cf. commentary in Lisa Ch. Taub, Ptolemy’s Universe. The Natural Philosophical and Ethical Foundations of Ptolemy’s Astronomy (Chicago: Open Court, 1993), 34–36.
22 Seneca, De otio IV, 2, quoted from On Leisure, 225. Cf. Hans Blumenberg, Die Genesis der kopernikanischen Welt (Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1996), 26.
23 Seneca, De otio, V, 3, quoted from On Leisure, 225.
24 For further sources on the history of contemplator coeli, see Hans Blumenberg, Die Legitimität der Neuzeit. Erneurte Ausgabe (Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1996), 309–76; Rémi Brague, The Wisdom of the World. The Human Experience of the Universe in the Western Thought (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2003), 25–98; Dieter Groh, Schöpfung im Widerspruch: Deutungen von der Natur des Menschen von der Genesis bis zur Reformation (Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 2003), 24–420.
25 Jean Bodin, Universae naturae theatrum (Francofurti: Wechelius, 1597), 633: [Deus] hominem non in abdito angulo, sed in mundi medio collocavit, ut multo facilius ac melius quam in coelo rerum omnium universitatem contemplaretur, & eius opificia omnia … Srv. Ann Blair, The Theatre of Nature: Jean Bodin and Renaissance Science (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997), 153f. Cf. similarly Girolamo Cardano, De rerum varietate (Lugduni: Stephanus, 1580), fol. 3r.
26 Tycho Brahe, ‘De disciplinis mathematicis’, in Tychonis Brahe Dani opera omnia, ed. John L. E. Dreyer (10 vols., Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1913–1929), vol. 1, 143–73, here 152. Quoted from Tycho Brahe, ‘On Mathematical Studies’, trans. Raymond H. Coon, Popular Astronomy 37 (1929): 311–20, here p. 319f. Cf. similarly Brahe, De stella nova, Opera, vol. 1, 35; Christopher Clavius, Commentarius in Sphaeram Ioannis de Sacro Bosco (Romae: Zanetti, 1606), fol. A 3; Giambattista Riccioli, Almagestum novum, 2 vols., (Benatius: Bononiae, 1651), vol. 1, 1.
27 Johannes Kepler, ‘Dissertatio cum Sidereo nuncio’, in Johannes Kepler, Gesammelte Werke, ed. Walter von Dyck, Max Caspar, and Volker Bialas (21 vols., Beck 1938–1999) (further as KGW), vol. 4, 309; cf. Paralipomena ad Vitellionem, KGW, vol. 2, 227.
28 Johannes Kepler, Epitome astronomiae copernicanae, KGW, vol. 7, 288–9.
29 See Philippe Hamou, La mutation du visible. Essai sur la portée épistemologique des instruments d’optique au XVIIe siècle, 2 vols (Paris: Presses Universitaires du Septentrion, 1999), vol. 1, 49–52; 287f.; Philippe Hamou, Voir et connaître à l’âge classique (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2002), 44f.; Christoph Lüthy, ‘Atomism, Lynceus, and the Fate of Seventeenth-Century Microscopy’, Early Science and Medicine 1 (1996): 1–27; Hans Blumenberg, Die Genesis der kopernikanischen Welt, 746.
30 Albert van Helden, Measuring the Universe. Cosmic Dimensions from Aristarchus to Halley (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985), 151–8. For Newton, see his A Treatise of the System of the World (London: Fayram, 1731), 91; cf. tables of Giovanni B. Riccioli showing increasing estimates of the dimensions of the cosmos, see his Almagestum novum (2 vols., Bononiae: Benatius, 1651), vol. 1, 419ab, 680a–683b.
31 See Dick, The Plurality of Worlds, 6–42.
32 See many examples in Guthke, Der Mythos der Neuzeit, 91–105; Dick, Plurality of Worlds, 69–101. Cf. Jean-Charles Darmon, ‘L’imagination de l’espace entre argumentation philosophique et fiction’, Études Littéraires 34 (2002), 217–39; Marie-Rose Carré, ‘A Man between Two Worlds: Pierre Borel and His Discours nouveau prouvant la pluralité des mondes of 1657’, Isis 65 (1974): 322–35.
33 Anton Matytsin, ‘Scepticism and Certainty in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Speculations about the Plurality of Worlds’, Science et Esprit 65 (2013): 359–72; Patricia Fara, ‘Heavenly Bodies: Newtonianism, Natural Theology and the Plurality of Worlds Debate in the Eighteenth Century’, Journal for the History of Astronomy 35 (2004): 143–60.
34 Richard Bentley, ‘Eight Boyle Lectures: A Confutation of Atheism from the Origin and Frame of the World’, in The Works of Richard Bentley, ed. Alexander Ryce (4 vols., London: Robson, 1838), vol. 3, 175. Cf. similarly William Derham, Astro-theology: Or, A Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God, from a Survey of the Heavens (7th ed., London: Innys – Manby, 1738), xlvii, 40f.; William Derham, Physicotheology. Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God from his Works of Creation (12th ed., London, Innys – Richardson, 1724), 111, 165, 282–8.
35 Bernard le Bovier Fontenelle, Conversation on the Plurality of Worlds, trans. H. A. Hargreaves (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), 44.
36 Andriesse, Huygens, p. 57f. On the learning of classical languages and literature in Huygens’ family, see also Chris Joby, ‘Constantijn Huygens’ Knowledge and Use of Greek’, Humanistica Lovaniensia. Journal of Neo-Latin Studies 64 (2015): 283–320.
37 An important document evidencing Huygens’ vast scholarship, including Greek and Roman authors, the Church fathers, theological literature and early modern science and philosophy, is the list of books in his possession (some of them inherited from his father) published by Huygens’ heirs in 1695. The list is reprinted at the end of OC 22 with its own pagination – here see, e.g. Seneca’s Opera on p. 16, 21, 26 and Ciceronis Opera on p. 36.
38 See, e.g. Chareix, La philosophie naturelle de Christiaan Huygens, 271.
39 Huygens, Réflexions, OC 21, 542, Cosmotheoros, OC 21, 747, 757.
40 Huygens, Cosmotheoros, OC 21, 699.
41 Huygens, Cosmotheoros, OC 21, 699; quoted from Christiaan Huygens, The Celestial Worlds Discover’d Or, Conjectures Concerning the Inhabitants, Plants and Production, of the Worlds in the Planets (London: Childe, 1698), 18. Huygens shows the same conviction already in the early Systema Saturnium (1659), OC 15, 295.
42 Huygens, Cosmotheoros, OC 21, 699, The Celestial Worlds, 18.
43 Huygens, Cosmotheoros, OC 21, 687, The Celestial Worlds, 7f. Cf.
… who would venture to say, that no where else were to be found any that enjoy’d he glorious sight of Nature’s Opera? Or if there were any fellow-Spectators, yet we were the only ones that had dived deep into the secrets and knowlege of it?. (Cosmotheoros, OC 21, 733; The Celestial Worlds, 62)
44 Huygens, Cosmotheoros, OC 21, 713; The Celestial Worlds, 38.
45 Huygens, Réflexions, OC 21, 543f.
46 Huygens, Cosmotheoros, OC 21, 729.
47 Huygens, Cosmotheoros, OC 21, 715; The Celestial Worlds, 38.
48 Huygens, Cosmotheoros, OC 21, 741.
49 Ibid., 743, cf. 711, 729.
50 Huygens, Pensees mesles, OC 21, 368, Cosmotheoros, OC 21, 807, 817.
51 Huygens, Cosmotheoros, OC 21, 687.
52 Ibid., 737.
53 Huygens, Pensees meslees, OC 21, 371; Réflexions, OC 21, 557; Cosmotheoros, OC 21, 689.
54 Huygens’ deductive reasoning was described, e.g. by Aït-Touati, Fictions of the Cosmos, 104–8.
55 Huygens, Cosmotheoros, OC 21, 733–5.
56 Ibid., 745.
57 Ibid., 747.
58 Ibid., 749.
59 Basnage to Leibniz, 31 julliet 1697, in Gottfried W. Leibniz, Die philosophischen Schriften (7 vols., edited by Carl J. Gerhard, Berlin: Winter, 1875–1890, reprinted Darmstadt: Olms, 1978), Vol. 3, 135. Leibniz defended Huygens; see Leibniz an Basnage, 31 Aoust 1697: Un aussi grand esprit que le sien (sc. Huygens’) ne pouvoit rien dire qui ne merite quelque attention (Ibid., vol. 3, 137). This and further examples are mentioned in Mormino, ‘Ammirare e comprendere’, 500.
60 Hadot, Pierre, The Veil of the Isis. An Essay on the History of the Idea of Nature, trans. Michael Chase (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press, 2006); Blumenberg, Die Legitimität der Neuzeit, 401–71; Peter Harrison, The Territories of Science and Religion (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2015), 66–81, 120–44.
61 Huygens, Cosmotheoros, OC 21, 731, The Celestial Worlds 61.
62 Huygens, Cosmotheoros, OC 21, 731, The Celestial Worlds 60.
63 Huygens, Cosmotheoros, OC 21, 733.
64 Ibid., 731f.
65 Špelda, Daniel, ‘Veritas Filia Temporis: The Origins of the Idea of Scientific Progress’, Annals of Science 73 (2016): 375–91.
66 In the dedication to Systema Saturnium, Huygens writes about the destructive influence of time which can cause new objects to be forgotten, which should be prevented by their publication in the form of a book. See OC 15, 215–7. Cf. Peter Münte, ‘Strukturelle Motive der Beziehung von Wissenschaft und Herrschaft. Zur wissenschaftssoziologischen Bedeutung der Analyse von Widmungsbriefen am Beispiel der Widmung an Leopold de ‘Medici in Chrisitaan Huygens’ Systema Saturnium’, in Die Kunst der Mächtigen Und Die Macht der Kunst: Untersuchungen Zu Mäzenatentum Und Kulturpatronage, ed. Christine Tauber, Johannes Süßmann, and Ulrich Oevermann (Akademie Verlag: Berlin, 2007), 151–78.
67 See note 51 above.
68 Huygens, Pensees meslees, OC 21, 357, 366; Cosmotheoros, OC 21, 686.
69 See, e.g. Fréderique Rouvillois, L’invention du progrès, 1680–1730, CNRS, Paris 2010, 10–80. Cf. the still valuable John B. Bury, The Idea of Progress. An Inquiry into its Origin and Growth (London: MacMillan, 1920), 51–125.
70 See Jochen Schlobach, Zyklentheorie und Epochenmetaphorik. Studien zur bildlichen Sprache der Geschichtsreflexion in Frankreich von der Renaissance bis zur Frühaufklärung (München: Fink, 1980), 250–329; Krzystof Pomian, L’ordre du temps (Paris: Gallimard, 1988), 38–40, 51–5.
71 See Nicolas Malebranche, The Search Afther Truth, trans. Thomas M. Lennon and Paul J. Olscamp (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 295f.
72 Huygens, Cosmotheoros, OC 21, 737; The Celestial Worlds, 69.
73 Huygens, Cosmotheoros, OC 21, 739, The Celestial Worlds, 68.
74 Peter Harrison, ‘Curiosity, Forbidden Knowledge, and the Reformation of Natural Philosophy in Early Modern England’, Isis 92 (2001): 265–90; Blumenberg, Die Legitimität der Neuzeit, 447–52.
75 Huygens, Cosmotheoros, OC 21, 737.
76 Huygens, Cosmotheoros, OC 21, 739, The Celestial Worlds, 69. … dubitari non posse, quin ea conditione homines nati sint, ut multo temporis decursu paulatim artes disciplinasque eruant; nullam enim harum iis ingenitam esse, aut subito a Deo infusam …
77 See Benito Pereira, Commentariorum et disputationum in Genesim tomi quattuor (4 vols., 4th ed., Lugduni: Cardon, 1599), vol. 1, 528–32; Franciscus Suárez, ‘De opere sex dierum’, in Franciscus Suárez, Opera omnia, ed. A. D. M. André (28 vols., Paris: Vivès, 1856–1878) vol. 3, 228–33; Eustachio a Sancto Paulo, Summa theologiae tripartita (3 vols., Parisiis: Chastelain, 1613), vol. 1, 804.
78 Athanasius Kircher, Arca Noë (Amstelodami: Jansonnius, 1675), fol. 4b.; Francesco Sizi, Dianoia astronomica, optica, physica (Venetiis: Bertanus, 1611), 17; Caspar Schott, Cursus mathematicus (Francofurtensis: Schwonwetter, 1677), 299; Franciscus Levera, Prodromus universae astronomiae restitutae (Romae: Bernabo, 1663), 32b; Anton M. R. Rheita, Oculus Enoch et Eliae sive radius sidereomysticus (Antverpiae: Verdussius, 1645), unpaginated praefatio; Riccioli, Almagestum novum, vol. 1, viii.
79 Hyugens, Cosmotheoros, Appendice II, OC 21, 823.
80 Chareix, La philosophie naturelle de Christian Huygens, 266–72; cf. Chareix, ‘Le rationnel et le raisonnable’, Chareix, ‘Experientia ac ratio’.
81 An up-to-date and very useful overview – although without mentioning Huygens – is presented by Samuel Newlands, ‘The Problem of Evil’, in The Routledge Companion to Seventeenth Century Philosophy, ed. Dan Kaufman (London: Routledge, 2018), 537–62.
82 See their correspondence in the 1690s, OC X, letters from and to Bayle: 1, 3–5, 267f., 273f.; letters from and to Leibniz are scattered throughout the volume.
83 Odo Marquard, ‘Felix culpa? Bemerkungen zu einem Applikationsschicksal von Genesis 3’, in Text und Applikation. Theologie, Jurisprudenz und Literaturwissenschaft im hermeneutischen Gespräch (= Poetik und Hermeneutik 9), ed. Manfred Fuhrmann (München: Fink, 1981), 53–71; Arthur O. Lovejoy, ‘Milton and the Paradox of the Fortunate Fall’, ELH 4 (1937): 161–97; Dieter Groh, Schöpfung im Widerspruch: Deutungen von der Natur des Menschen von der Genesis bis zur Reformation (Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 2003), 543–742; Helga Dirlinger, ‘Protestantische Aufklärung und naturwissenschaftliche Weltsicht – Die Physikotheologie’, Protestantische Mentalitäten, ed. Johanne Dantine, Klaus Thien, and Michael Weinzierl (Wien: Passagen Verlag, 1999), 111–36. Peter Harrison amazingly overlooks the idea felix culpa in his The Fall of Man and the Foundations of Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007).
84 Ruth Groh and Dieter Groh, ‘Zum Wandel der Denkmuster im geologischen Diskurs des 18. Jahrhunderts’, Zeitschrift für Historische Forschung 24 (1997): 575–604; Michael Kempe, ‘Die Sintfluttheorie von Johann Jakob Scheuchzer: Zur Entstehung des modernen Weltbildes und Naturverständnisses’, Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft 44 (1996): 485–501.
85 Huygens, De rationi imperviis, OC 21, 514; Réflexions, OC 21, 545.
86 Huygens, Cosmotheoros, OC 21, 715, The Celestial Worlds, 40.
87 Huygens, Cosmotheoros, OC 21, 717, The Celestial Worlds, 41.