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Dictionary of the History of Ideas

Studies of Selected Pivotal Ideas
  
  
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4. For we must take into account a phenomenon
often noted but never explained: a sort of respiratory
rhythm in history, a psychological balancing-wheel,
which creates kinships between one epoch and another,
separated by long intervals. According to E. d'Ors, a
classical era is followed by a baroque era; in the cos-
mological imagination, a Parmenidean era is followed
by a Heraclitean era. Intellectual rigor gives way to
an insurgence of instinctive forces. There are whole-
some but harsh disciplines (like Aristotelianism) which
are obstacles to such revolts; then the day comes when
the barrier collapses. It was maintained by timidity;
all of a sudden fear has disappeared, and the attractive
but disturbing doctrines regain their sway and release
an enormous internal flood of images. These move-
ments are difficult to explain, for social causation does
not help; neither do the discoveries of new worlds or
of Greek manuscripts. But they must be recognized
and taken into account.

We can indicate summarily some of these intellectual
rhythms. The triumph of scholastic philosophy in the
thirteenth century inaugurated a Parmenidean era in
cosmology. The Florentine Renaissance in the fifteenth
century inaugurated a Heraclitean era which was
joined with the Neo-Platonism of the first centuries;
the new spirit kept growing stronger making possible
the infinite worlds of Bruno's cosmology and the dis-
coveries of Kepler and Galileo. The seventeenth cen-
tury saw the opposition between classical French
thought dominated by Descartes and British thought
dominated by the appeal of the infinite. Newton rec-
onciled temporarily the two tendencies by satisfying
both. But the eighteenth century, in the main super-
ficially classical, marked a return to the Renaissance,
to a taste for magic and the occult; Leibniz' philoso-
phy, whose influence was enormous, strengthened the
renewed need for Plenitude, infinite Diversity, and
creative profusion. And the nineteenth century, despite
the steady progress of pure science, was to see, about
every twenty years, a return of this Leibnizian intel-
lectual outlook accompanied by the flourishing growth
of the same dreams; for example, the plurality of in-
habited worlds offered itself to a plurality of existing
beings in a continuous ascent towards an unattainable
Perfection.

The relations between imagination and astronomy
will be studied here from two points of view: how
imagination favors or obstructs the efforts of true sci-
entists; and how, among nonspecialists, it takes posses-
sion of discoveries, distorts them, and supplements
them in its own way. We shall give only some attention
to the second point of view.