3.
A few years after Kepler's discoveries, mechanism
triumphed over
vitalistic dynamism in science and in
the formulation of celestial motions.
Descartes was not an astronomer, but his cosmology
wielded a powerful
influence on thinkers in many
countries as well as in France (Principles of Philosophy,
Latin ed., 1644; French,
1647; Treatise on the World,
posthumous, 1664). With
respect to imagination Des-
cartes's case is
unique. He is undoubtedly classical
in his preference for the simplicity of
basic premisses
and for the inflexible Rigor of fixed Laws. Space was
not absolute and the Void did not exist; Descartes
started with an infinitely divisible and inert matter.
Perfect
motion, for Descartes, would be the kind that
is determined by the
principle of inertia, not in a circle
but in a straight line. However, this
motion is impossi-
ble in a Plenum in which
no particle could be moved
without displacing another—whence the
Vortex, and
whence by friction the formation of three kinds of
particles. The most tenuous or subtle matter immedi-
ately fills all empty spaces; this dust forms the
suns
and their planets. In all this there is no scale of values
or
importance. So Descartes constructed, starting from
an initial simplicity,
a complicated, unstable system
which was as stifling for an imagination in
love with
life and freedom as it was repugnant for the soul in
love
with harmony.
This system seemed, nonetheless, to satisfy both the
rigorousness and the
imagination of Descartes. The
numerous images that he employed (eels
twisted on
the floor of a boat, straws in the eddies of a river) bear
witness to his bias for minute displacements which
reduce the universe to
terrestrial models.
And yet Descartes did serve the cosmic imagination:
he contributed greatly
to the vogue of astronomy at
the end of the seventeenth century. Since his
was an
unlimited universe, he satisfied those sensibilities that
hungered for the infinite. As he brought in a great
variety of vortices in
perpetual combination and sepa-
ration, he
drew in his wake the lovers of change and
diversity. He revived the great
dream of the plurality
of inhabited worlds. He created an impression
of
intimacy among these systems which come in contact
with each other
and modify one another. Finally, by
introducing a cooling off of the sun or
the impact of
a comet, Descartes provided, in his lifeless cosmos, for
death as a stage of the life-process. The end of the
world, formerly
considered a supernatural event, had
now become Nature's threat; and it had
to do with
a theme of fascinating astronomical dreaming, as we
shall
see.
