贝尔纳·勒布耶·德·丰特奈尔Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle

德·丰特奈尔的母亲是Marthe Corneille，是诗人和剧作家Pierre和Thomas Corneille的姐妹。德·丰特奈尔的父亲是François 贝尔纳·勒布耶·德·丰特奈尔，他是在鲁昂省法院工作的律师。le 德·丰特奈尔家族传统上是律师，最初来自阿朗松，位于鲁昂西南约150公里，巴黎以西约170公里。它曾是一个罗马天主教家庭，但在Nicolas Le 德·丰特奈尔（德·丰特奈尔的曾祖父）时代，他们全部皈依了加尔文主义。然而，他的儿子Isaë le 德·丰特奈尔（德·丰特奈尔的祖父）使家族重新皈依罗马天主教。杰西·道格拉斯 McKie写道[20]：-

无论在他父亲一方还是母亲一方，他都出身于古老家族，其成员曾担任诺曼底省的最高法律职务……

按照家族传统，德·丰特奈尔的父母希望他们的儿子接受律师培训。他在鲁昂的耶稣会学院接受教育，于1664年入学，并在那里与皮埃尔·伐里农和洛必达成为朋友。他表现出极大的多才多艺，但他的偏好肯定指向学术的文学方面。当他十三岁时，他创作了一首拉丁诗，但为了遵循家族的愿望并接受法律培训，他放弃了许多他所热爱的学问。他于1672年开始学习法律，并在接下来的五年里接受律师培训。然而，在1677年完成培训后，他接手了他的第一个案件，但败诉了。这标志着他非常短暂的律师生涯的结束，因为他立即放弃了这一职业，转向了他的文学倾向。

从1677年起，德·丰特奈尔开始部分时间住在巴黎，部分时间住在鲁昂，直到十年后才在巴黎永久定居。1677年当然不是他第一次去巴黎，前一年他已被叔父Thomas Corneille带到那里。Thomas Corneille是Le Mercure galant的编辑，而德·丰特奈尔成了该刊物的偶尔撰稿人。在移居巴黎之前，Le Mercure galant鼓励他这样做。以下内容于1677年5月出现在该刊物上：-

德·丰特奈尔，年仅二十岁，却拥有常人四十岁才有的学识……他来自鲁昂；他在那里安家，几位在此见过他的最优秀的贵族承认，把他留在外省无异于谋杀……他珍视自己的渊博学识，仅在于能以此作为绅士之用。他才思敏捷、优雅而细腻。

Steven F Rendall写道[22]：-

德·丰特奈尔抵达巴黎后，很快便与聚集在Henri Justel、医生Bourdelot、化学家Lémery和几何学家Sauveur等人周围的一群科学家和自由思想者取得了联系。他常在他朋友abbé de Saint-Pierre和皮埃尔·伐里农（也来自鲁昂）的家中度过许多时光；他可能在那里遇见了尼古拉斯‧马勒伯朗士。……德·丰特奈尔不仅在这些群体中，而且在Ninon de Lenclos、Mme de la Mésangère、duchesse Du Maine和Mme Tencin举办的上流沙龙中，都成了知名人物。人们常常认为，德·丰特奈尔充当了学者与世俗沙龙之间的中介，并且他把后者视为自己重要的受众。

德·丰特奈尔早期闯入文学界的尝试并不太成功。他写了诗，于1677年在Le Mercure galant上发表。1676年，他拿自己的诗去参加法兰西学院设立的奖项，但没有取得多大成功，尽管他确实获得了一个accessit。他写了歌剧Psyché（1678年）和Bellérophon（1679年）以及悲剧Aspar（1680年）。这部戏剧在1680年上演时彻底失败，而德·丰特奈尔下一次尝试的戏剧La Comète，他于1681年1月匿名出版，境遇也好不了多少。此时或许有理由问，一位在诗歌、戏剧和歌剧方面都不太成功的作家，为何值得被收入一个由对数学科学做出贡献者组成的档案中。答案是，在他职业生涯的这个节点，德·丰特奈尔改变了方向，开始撰写关于数学史以及数学与科学哲学的作品。他对他人作品的评价极为出色，他的著作包含了关于他那个时代科学家的绝佳信息来源。

德·丰特奈尔第一部开始为他赢得声誉的作品是Lettres galantes（1683年），但他第一部真正重大的成功是Dialogues des Morts（1683年）。在这部作品中，他以对话的形式向读者呈现了新的哲学思想，这些对话模仿Lucian的对话录，发生在苏格拉底与蒙田、塞涅卡与斯卡龙等哲学家之间。到1715年之前，这本书至少出版了十二版，很快便出现了英文和其他语言的译本；这部作品被其他作者大量模仿。德·丰特奈尔很快又推出了其他成功作品，包括为其1684年去世的叔父Pierre Corneille写的传记。该传记首次刊印于1685年1月的Nouvelles de la republique des lettres上。然而，德·丰特奈尔最著名的作品是Entretiens sur la pluralité des mondes（1686年）。他在序言中解释了他为谁写作（我们的译文基于[3]中给出的译文）：-

我希望以一种非哲学的方式来表述哲学；我试图写一本书，既不会对轻松愉快的人来说过于深奥，也不会对博学的人来说过于消遣。……也许在试图寻找一条中间道路，使哲学适合每一个阶层时，我选择了一条不会让任何人满意的道路。保持中庸是非常困难的，我想我永远不会倾向于再做第二次这种性质的尝试。我应该提醒那些对物理学有所了解的人，我不认为这本书能给他们提供任何信息；它只会给他们提供一些消遣，以生动的方式呈现他们通过学习已经熟悉的内容。我也想告诉那些对这些主题一无所知的人，我的愿望是同时娱乐和教导他们：前者如果在这里期望有所提高，就会违背我的意图，后者如果只寻求娱乐，也会如此。

这本书通俗地阐述了勒内·笛卡儿的物理学以及伽利略关于太阳、地球和行星的观点。尽管德·丰特奈尔担心他的中间道路可能不会吸引任何人，但事实恰恰相反，这本书可以说是第一部科普经典。Steven Rendall [22]试图确切地弄清楚德·丰特奈尔在写这本书和类似作品时心中想的是谁：-

当我们把德·丰特奈尔描述为“普及者”时，我们必须记住，他并不是面向广大公众，而只是面向有限的精英。……[然而]德·丰特奈尔的读者……从一开始就比许多其他十七世纪后期的作家广泛得多，也多样得多。

当然，这部作品的成功部分归功于德·丰特奈尔的语言运用。弗瑞兹·约翰 van Eerde [24]写道：-

……语言反迂腐且令人愉悦。尽管这种语言常常接近爱情的语言，但它从未完全变成那样。

在离开Entretiens sur la pluralité des mondes之前，让我们注意，如上所述，它很大程度上基于勒内·笛卡儿的物理学。然而，我们不应由此推断德·丰特奈尔骨子里是笛卡尔主义者。事实上，在他1886年出版的Doutes sur le système physique des causes occasionelle中（与Entretiens同年），德·丰特奈尔攻击了笛卡尔因果性[19]：-

……这部著作是对笛卡尔形而上学在影响科学方面的攻击，也是对一种普遍自然法则的诉求，该法则将使科学摆脱对上帝作为解释的依赖。

他于1687年以Histoire des oracles为题发表的两篇论文引起了一些神学争议。他以科学的方式探讨这一主题，提出神谕并非产生超自然效果，而通常是祭司欺诈的结果。然而，他确实在一定程度上避免了与教会的冲突，他提出，如果上帝允许，魔鬼本可以超自然地操作神谕。1688年，他出版了Digression sur les anciens et les modernes，其中他论证现代人优于古人，因为人类心智更加成熟。这使他直接与几位有影响力的人物对立，并且可能是他四次尝试加入法兰西学院均遭拒绝的主要原因。他的下一部著作Doutes sur le système physique des causes occasionnelles是对尼古拉斯‧马勒伯朗士思想的攻击。尽管与重要人物的观点相悖，德·丰特奈尔还是在1691年第五次尝试时当选为法兰西学院院士，并从1697年起成为Académie des Sciences的常任秘书。在[18]中，Leonard Marsak解释了为什么德·丰特奈尔被选担任这一职位：-

德·丰特奈尔作为一位人文主义者和文学家，在1699年Académie des Sciences重组时被选为秘书，并非像许多人认为的那样充当科学的普及者，而是担任其批评者并为其辩护，这并非偶然。

德·丰特奈尔向Académie提交了许多讣告，其中艾萨克·牛顿和哥特弗里德·威廉·莱布尼茨的讣告尤为著名。

1699年，德·丰特奈尔撰写了Of the Usefulness of Mathematical Learning。在其中他写道：-

人们为何要热衷于数学和自然哲学？……人们很容易将他们不理解的东西称为无用。这是一种报复……。

人们起初会认为，如果数学应当被限制在其中有用的部分，那么只应改进那些与技艺有直接而可感知的密切关系的内容，其余部分则应作为空洞的理论而被忽视。但这将是一个非常错误的观念。例如，航海术与天文学有着必然的联系，而为了航海的利益，天文学无论怎样改进都不为过。由于望远镜的缘故，天文学离不开光学：而这两者，正如数学的所有部分一样，都建立在几何学之上……

作为Académie des Sciences的常任秘书，德·丰特奈尔撰写了Histoire du renouvellement de l'Académie des Sciences，该书于1708年、1717年和1722年分三卷出版。这些卷册包含了德·丰特奈尔对科学院会议记录的尖锐讨论，以及他撰写的六十九篇成员颂词（讣告）。然而，科学院从1699年起每年还出版其Mémoires，除了科学论文外，其中也包含德·丰特奈尔撰写的讣告。道格拉斯 McKie写道[21]：-

……然而，今天他更常因这些颂词而被人们铭记。这些颂词简洁、精确、自然，其科学内容如同它们所纪念的六十九位天文学家、化学家、物理学家、解剖学家等人一样丰富多样，体现了一种新的文学形式，由德·丰特奈尔塑造和创造，具有独特的法国风格，至今在其他语言中仍不易被模仿，也未被非常成功地模仿……

正是在这些颂词中，德·丰特奈尔得以阐述他对科学的看法，正如Leonard Marsak所解释的[18]：-

因此，对德·丰特奈尔而言，科学的真正意义不在于物质上的改善，甚至也不在于科学家对自然过程日益增长的认识——尽管这些成就为其活动增添了价值——而在于一种新形成的方法论使心灵得以逐渐从无知和错误中解放出来。德·丰特奈尔感觉到，那些易受后一过程影响的人正在为自己创造一种新的生活方式，其含义确实是革命性的。科学的意义从未像在我们所知的“颂词”那一系列“科学家生平”中那样清晰，其价值也从未得到如此欣赏。

并非每个人都对德·丰特奈尔的颂词给予无保留的赞扬。路易·安托万-Louis Séguier，他在法兰西学术院接替德·丰特奈尔，写道（例如见[17]）：-

但是，对于德·丰特奈尔那些如此值得称道的颂词，我们应当给予怎样的赞誉呢？他不仅成功克服了人们对悼词的偏见，而且把赞美一个特定人物和一种新的才能变成了一门艺术。此刻我仿佛听到他们所有人，所有那些著名的逝者，敦促我偿还他们的恩情。他们禀赋各异，声名不等，但几乎所有人都被这位颂词作者的雄辩与洞见提升到了同等程度的名望——这位演说家更懂得如何赞美他们，而不是效仿或评判他们。

当然，他在Académie des Sciences的职务并未阻止德·丰特奈尔继续创作其他重要著作。例如在De l'origine des fables（1724）中，他比较了希腊神话与美洲印第安神话，并提出人类有一种普遍的神话倾向。他认为神话是荒谬的，但主张这些故事是在更早、更原始的人类社会中发展起来的。

Bernard de Fontenelle's mother was Marthe Corneille, the sister of the poets and dramatists Pierre and Thomas Corneille. Bernard's father was François le Bovier de Fontenelle who was a lawyer working in the provincial court at Rouen. The le Bovier family were by tradition lawyers who came originally from Alençon, about 150 km south-west of Rouen and about 170 km west of Paris. It had been a Roman Catholic family, but they all converted to Calvinism at the time of Nicolas Le Bovier, Bernard's great-grandfather. However his son Isaë le Bovier, Bernard's grandfather, converted the family back to Roman Catholicism. Douglas McKie writes [20]:-

Both on his father's and his mother's side he was descended from ancient families whose members had held the highest legal offices in the province of Normandy ...

In line with the family tradition, Bernard's parents wished their son to train as an advocate. He was educated in the Jesuit College in Rouen, which he entered in 1664, and there became friends with Pierre Varignon and the Marquis de l'Hôpital. He showed great versatility but his preferences were certainly directed towards the literary side of scholarship. When he was thirteen years old he composed a Latin poem but he put aside much that he loved in the way of learning in order to follow his family's wishes and train for the law. He began to study law in 1672 and spent the next five years training to be an advocate. However, after completing his training in 1677 he took on his first case which he lost. This marked the end of his very short career as a lawyer for he promptly gave up the profession and turned towards his literary inclinations.

From 1677 Fontenelle began to live partly in Paris and partly in Rouen, only taking up permanent residence in Paris ten years later. The year 1677 was certainly not the first time he had been to Paris, having first been taken there by his uncle Thomas Corneille in the previous year. Thomas Corneille was an editor of the Le Mercure galant and Fontenelle became an occasional contributor to this journal. Before his move to Paris Le Mercure galant encouraged him to do so. The following appeared in the journal in May 1677:-

M de Fontenelle, who, at the age of twenty, possesses more knowledge than one ordinarily has at forty... He is from Rouen; he makes his home there, and several of our finest noblemen who have seen him here admit that it is tantamount to murder to leave him in the provinces ... He values his great knowledge only insofar as he can avail himself of it as a gentleman. He has a quick, elegant, and delicate wit.

Steven F Rendall writes [22]:-

When Fontenelle arrived in Paris, he soon made contact with the groups of scientists and free thinkers who gathered around men like Henri Justel, the physician Bourdelot, the chemist Lémery, and the geometer Sauveur. He spent many hours at the home of his friends the abbé de Saint-Pierre and Varignon, also from Rouen; he may have met Malebranche there. ... Fontenelle became a well-known figure not only in such groups, but also in the fashionable salons held by Ninon de Lenclos, Mme de la Mésangère, the duchesse Du Maine, and Mme Tencin. It has often been suggested that Fontenelle served as an intermediary between the savants and the worldly salons, and that he regarded the latter as his essential audience.

Fontenelle's early attempts to break into the literary world were not too successful. He wrote poetry which he published in Le Mercure galant in 1677. He entered his poetry for prizes offered by the Académie Française in 1676 but without much success, although he did obtain an accessit. He wrote the operas Psyché (1678) and Bellérophon (1679) and the tragedy Aspar (1680). This play proved a total failure when performed in 1680 and Fontenelle's next attempt at a play La Comète, which he published anonymously in January 1681, fared no better. It might be reasonable to ask at this point why a somewhat unsuccessful writer of poetry, plays, and operas, deserves to be in an archive consisting of those who have made contributions to the mathematical sciences. The answer is, that at this point in his career, Fontenelle changed direction and began to write works on the history of mathematics and the philosophy of mathematics and science. He evaluated the works of others extremely well and his writings contain a wonderful source of information about the scientists of his era.

The first work by Fontenelle which began to create a reputation for him was Lettres galantes (1683) but his first real major success was Dialogues des Morts (1683). In this work he presented new philosophical ideas to the reader in the form of conversations, modelled on the dialogues of Lucian, between philosophers such as Socrates and Montaigne, Seneca and Scarron. At least twelve editions of this book were published before 1715 and soon translations into English and other languages appeared; the work became much imitated by other authors. There quickly followed other successful works by Fontenelle including a biography of his uncle Pierre Corneille who died in 1684. The biography was first printed in the Nouvelles de la republique des lettres in January 1685. Fontenelle's most famous work, however, was Entretiens sur la pluralité des mondes (1686). He explains in the Preface whom he is writing for (our translation is based on that given in [3]):-

I wished to represent philosophy in a way that was not philosophical; I have attempted to compose a book that shall neither be too abstruse for the light-hearted, nor too recreational for the learned. ... possibly in attempting to find a middle way which would accommodate philosophy to every class, I have chosen one which will not please any. It is very difficult to maintain a medium, and I think I shall never be inclined to make a second attempt of this nature. I should warn those that have some knowledge of physics, that I do not suppose this book capable of giving them any information; it will merely afford them some amusement, by presenting in a lively manner what they have already become acquainted with by dint of study. I would also inform those who are ignorant of these subjects that it has been my desire to amuse and instruct them at the same time: the former will counteract my intention if they here expect improvement, and the latter, if they only seek for entertainment.

The book gives a popular exposition of Descartes' physics and Galileo's view of the sun, earth and planets. Despite Fontenelle's fears that his middle road might not appeal to anyone, quite the reverse was true and the book became arguably the first classic of popular science. Steven Rendall [22] tries to work out exactly who Fontenelle had in mind when he wrote this and similar works:-

When we describe Fontenelle as a "populariser", then, we must remember that he did not address himself to the public at large, but only to a limited elite. ... [However] Fontenelle's public was ... from the outset far more extensive and far more diverse than that of many other writers of the late seventeenth century.

Partly, of course, the success of the work is due to Fontenelle's use of language. John van Eerde [24] writes that the:-

... language is anti-pedantic and pleasurable. Although this language often borders on that of love, it never quite becomes that.

Before leaving Entretiens sur la pluralité des mondes let us note that, as mentioned above, it is heavily based on Descartes' physics. However, we should not deduce from this that Fontenelle was a Cartesian at heart. In fact in Doutes sur le système physique des causes occasionelle which he published in 1886 (the same year as Entretiens), Fontenelle attacks Cartesian causality [19]:-

... the work is an attack on Cartesian metaphysics as it affected science and a plea for a general law of nature that would free science from dependence upon God as explanation.

His two essays published in 1687 under the title Histoire des oracles caused some theological controversy. Approaching the subject in a scientific way, he suggested that oracles did not produce supernatural effects but were usually the result of priestly fraud. He did, however, go some way to avoiding a conflict with the church by suggesting that, had God allowed it, the Devil could have operated oracles supernaturally. In 1688 he published Digression sur les anciens et les modernes in which he argued that moderns were superior to ancients because of the greater maturity of the human mind. This put him into direct opposition to several influential men and was probably the main reason that he was rejected four times in his attempts to join the Académie Française. His next work Doutes sur le système physique des causes occasionnelles was an attack on the ideas of Nicolas Malebranche. Despite arguing against the views of important people, Fontenelle was elected to the Académie Française in 1691 on his fifth attempt, and became permanent secretary of the Académie des Sciences from 1697. In [18] Leonard Marsak explains why Fontenelle was chosen for this position:-

It is no accident that Bernard de Fontenelle, a humanist and littérateur, should have been chosen as secretary of the Académie des Sciences at its renewal in 1699, not to act as a populariser of science as many have believed, but to serve as its critic and to write its defence.

Fontenelle presented many obituary notices to the Académie, those of Newton and Leibniz being particularly notable.

In 1699 Fontenelle wrote Of the Usefulness of Mathematical Learning. In it he wrote:-

To what purpose should People become fond of the Mathematicks and Natural Philosophy? ... People very readily call Useless what they do not understand. It is a sort of Revenge ... .

One would think at first that if the Mathematicks were to be confin'd to what is useful in them, they ought only to be improv'd in those things which have an immediate and sensible Affinity with Arts, and the rest ought to be neglected as a Vain Theory. But this would be a very wrong Notion. As for Instance, the Art of Navigation hath a necessary Connection with Astronomy, and Astronomy can never be too much improv'd for the Benefit of Navigation. Astronomy cannot be without Optics by reason of Perspective Glasses: and both, as all parts of the Mathematicks are grounded upon Geometry ... .

In his role as permanent secretary of the Académie des Sciences, Fontenelle wrote Histoire du renouvellement de l'Académie des Sciences which appeared in three volumes in 1708, 1717 and 1722. These contain Fontenelle's sharp discussions of the proceedings of the Academy as well as the sixty-nine Éloges (obituaries) of members which he wrote. Also, however, the Academy published its Mémoires each year beginning in 1699 and, in addition to scientific papers, this also contained the obituaries written by Fontenelle. Douglas McKie writes [21]:-

... it is for the Éloges that he is more usually remembered today. Simple, exact, unaffected, and as varied in their scientific content as the sixty-nine astronomers, chemists, physicists, anatomists and others whom they commemorated, the Éloges exemplify a new literary form, moulded and created by Fontenelle, peculiarly French and still neither easily nor very successfully imitated in other languages ...

It is in the Éloges that Fontenelle was able to argue his view of science as Leonard Marsak explains [18]:-

The real meaning of science for Fontenelle, therefore, lay not in material improvement, nor even in the scientist's growing knowledge of the process of nature, although these achievements gave added value to his activity, but in the gradual emancipation of the mind from ignorance and error that a newly formed methodology made possible. Those susceptible to the latter process, Fontenelle sensed, were creating a new way of life for themselves that was indeed revolutionary in its implications. Nowhere is the meaning of science made more clear, and its value so appreciated, as in that series of "lives of the scientists" that we know as the "Éloges."

Not everyone lavished on Fontenelle unqualified praise for his Éloges. Antoine-Louis Séguier, who succeed Fontenelle in the Académie Française, wrote (see for example [17]):-

But what eulogy should we tender to Fontenelle for those so estimable éloges in which he not only succeeded in overcoming the human prejudice against funeral orations but made an art out of praising a particular person and a new kind of talent? I seem to hear them all at this moment, all those famous dead urging me to honour their debt. Endowed with different merits and unequal reputations, almost all of them were elevated to the same degree of celebrity by the eloquence and insight of the eulogist, an orator who knew somewhat better how to praise them than to emulate or judge them.

Of course his role with the Académie des Sciences did not prevent Fontenelle continuing to produce other important works. For example in De l'origine des fables (1724) he compared Greek and American Indian myths and suggested that there was a universal human predisposition toward mythology. He saw myths as absurd, but argued that the stories had grown in earlier, more primitive human societies.