Avihu Zakai-Jonathan Edwards' Philosophy of Nature_ the Re-Enchantment of the World in the Age of Scientific Reasoning-Continuum International Publishing Group (2010)

8/13/2019 Avihu Zakai-Jonathan Edwards' Philosophy of Nature_ the Re-Enchantment of the World in the Age of Scientific Re

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106 Jonathan Edwardss Philosophy of Nature

revolution signaled distress: Moving of thearth brings harmes andfeares.85 The ndings of the new natural philosophy meant that newPhilosophy calls all in doubt, leading to the decline of authority andintegrity when all cohaerence gone.86 In his Ignatius His Conclave ,(1611),87 Donne placed Columbus in Hell among other innovators,or Antichristian Heroes (19), such as Copernicus, Machiavelli, andmany other pioneers of modern thought, who shattered traditionalChristian modes of belief. Their innovations and discoveries gave anaffront to all antiquitie, and induced doubts, and anxieties by estab-lishing new opinions directly contrary to all established before (9).

In Donnes geography of Hell, they belong to Lucifers space becausetheir discoveries and innovations are the mark of the Devils work. Forexample, because Christopher Columbus found all waies in the earth& sea open to him, [he] did not feare any dif culty inHell (69). WhenDonne placed innovation and discovery within Satans inner sanc-tum, the nature of change itself becomes sin.88

Donne equates geography with Hell, placing there discoveries andinnovations. Bacon on the other equates geography with Utopia as inthe New Atlantis (1626) and in his other writings. He acclaims theadvancement of learning based on discoveries and innovations. WhereasDonne sent Columbus to Hell, for Bacon Columbuss discovery of America was rather the ful llment of Daniels prophecy, inauguratinga new age of learninga typically con dent Renaissance assessment ofits own newness.89 He compared his undertaking to that of Columbus,and his philosophy to an adventurous voyage on the ocean.90 Believ-

ing discovery and innovation to be the way of the advancement oflearning, Bacon identi ed himself with Columbus, maintaining that what he was attempting to do inThe New Organon (1620) in terms ofthe renewal of learning and the interpretation of nature should becompared with Columbus prophetic voyage to the new world: Andtherefore we should reveal and publish our conjectures, which make it

85

Donne, A Valediction: Forbidding mourning, in Grierson, I, p. 48.86 Donne, First Anniversary , p. 237.87 John Donne,Ignatius His Conclave , ed. T. S. Healy, S. J. (Oxford: Clarendon Press,

1969). All references to DonnesIgnatius His Conclave are to this edition.88 Albanese,New Science, New World , p. 42.89 Brian Vickers, Bacon and the Progress of Knowledge, Journal of the History of Ideas

53 (Jul.Sept. 1992), p. 496. See also, Charles Whitney, Francis Bacons Instauratio:Dominion of and over Humanity, Journal of the History of Ideas 50 (Jul.Sept. 1989),pp. 37190.

90

Rossi, Bacons Idea of Science, p. 26.


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Donne and the New Philosophy 107

reasonable to have hope: just as Columbus did, before his wonderful voyage across the Atlantic Sea, when he gave reason why he was con -dent that new lands and continents, beyond those previously known,could be found.91 Further, The New Organon , which explains theactual art of interpreting nature and the true operation of the intel-lect, would open the way to new worlds of learning and knowledge.92 In order to understand the fabric of the universe, its structure onemust always travel through the forests of experience and not throughconsecrated tradition.93 In contrast therefore to Donnes attempt atthe ordering and preservation of traditional truths, Bacon propagated

the view of the progress of knowledge, as inThe Advancement ofLearning (1605). History is a space of time in which human beings maybring about progress and thus ful ll their earthly aspirations andexpectations. In this context, it is not surprising that one of the maintenets of Bacons defense of learning was his strict separation ofscience and religion.94

3. D N P Donnes thought is among the very early instances of the impact of thenew natural philosophy on traditional religious thought and belief,and the fears and anxieties which accompanied the new scienti cideology:

And new Philosophy calls all in doubt, The Element of re is quite put out; TheSun is lost, and thearth, and no mans wit Can well direct him where to look forit . . . Tis all in pieces, all cohaerence gone; All just supply, and all Relation. ( FirstAnniversary , 20514)

Donne was no stranger to contemporary scienti c thought, especiallyin the eld of astronomy, keeping abreast, for example, of the works ofKepler and Galileo. He was exceptionally learned and kept himselfup to the hour if not of the minute in intellectual matters, readingthose who advanced the new philosophy and astronomy, among themTycho Brahe, Kepler, Copernicus ,and Galileo.95 Indeed, no other

91 Bacon,The New Organon , p. 77.92 Ibid., p. 25.93 Bacon, Preface toThe Great Renewal , p. 10.94 Markku Peltonen, Introduction, inThe Cambridge Companion to Bacon , p. 19.95 Denis Donoghue, Introduction, inThe Complete Poetry and Selected Prose of John

Donne , ed. Charles M. Cof n (New York: Modern Library, 2001), pp. xxviixxviii.


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poet of the seventeenth century showed the same sensitiveness tothe consequences of the new discoveries of travelers, astronomers,physiologists and physicians as Donne.96 One can nd in his worksthe names of Copernicus, Tycho Brahe, Kepler, William Gilbert, andGalileo, to note only a few. That Donne laid hold upon the matterof the new philosophy his work amply testi ed. Not only is there theevidence of his own statement that he read some of the most impor-tant books on the new thinkers, but also there is the richer and more valuable witness of the in uence of their doctrines upon his own way of thinking.97 Donne was not only fully aware of the scienti c cul-

ture of his time; his works show the religious theological reaction to it,especially the many fears and anxieties it aroused in contemporaries. With regard to familiarity with scienti c thought, Donne was an

exception among contemporary English writers. While Shakespearespoetic imagination showed no response either to new stars or to otherspectacular changes in the cosmic universe, Donne was the rstEnglish poet whose imagination was stirred by the new discoveries.98 He was in uenced in particular by the new science of astronomy. As aresult of the discoveries of Copernicus, Galileo, and Kepler, he wrote:heaven lookes on us with new eyes.99 More speci cally:

As new Philosophy arrests the Sunne And bids the passive earth about it runne,So we have dulld our mind.100

In his poem A Valediction: Forbidding mourning he wrote aboutthe movement of the earth, thus apparently accepting the CopernicanRevolution in astronomy, yet at the same time expressing the deep-seated fears it aroused:

Moving of thearth brings harmes and feares,Men reckon what it did and meant,But trepidation of the spheares,Though greater farre, is innocent.101

96 Grierson,The Poems of John Donne , II, p. 189.97 Charles M. Cof n, John Donne and the New Philosophy (London: Routledge, 1958),

p. 81.98 Nicolson,Science and Imagination , p. 42.99 Ibid., p. 48.

100 Ibid., p. 48.101

Donne, A Valediction: Forbidding mourning, in Grierson, I, p. 50.


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The passage shows New Philosophys double face; expressing morespeci cally the bewilderment, confusion and fear, aroused in the poetby astronomical discovery, as well as the anxiety caused by the heliocen-tric system. Donne indeed experienced a unique crisis: the collapse ofcosmology and epistemology simultaneously.102

The same sense of alarm and dread appears in other works. In asermon preached in 1626, Donne spoke of the traditional reading ofthe world of nature, saying that we looke upon Nature with AristotlesSpectacles, and upon the body of man with Galens , and about theframe of the world with Ptolomies Spectacles.103 His understanding

of the world of nature was thus based on the Aristotelian interpreta-tion; that of the human body on Galen, and on Ptolemy in astronomy.But in the same sermon he showed how the new scienti c philosophy was shattering these views:

I need not call in new Philosophy, that denies settlednesse, acquiescence in the very body of the Earth, but makes the Earth to move in that place, where wethought the Sunne had moved; I need not that helpe, that the Earth it selfe is in

Motion, to prove this, That nothing upon Earth is permanent; The Assertion willstand of it selfe, till some man assign me some instance, something that a manmay relie upon, and nd permanent.104

The new Philosophy, then, not only the new astronomy, contra-dicted traditional concept of the earth as the center of the universe,and with it the teleological theology of order inherent in the structureof the world where the whole universe reveals the fabric of redemp-

tion. Donne not only lamented the loss of the earth as the center ofthe world, but seized upon Copernican thought to proclaim that the very motion of the earth might help to emphasize That nothing uponEarth is permanent. Not only did the new astronomy lead to changesin heaven, and to mutability in the whole universe, thus increasinghuman insecurity, fears, and doubts, but all these transformations weresure and unmistakable signs of the worlds decay. In face of all this,Donne turned to eternity as a source of stability and permanence:Donnes reaction to new stars and multiple worlds is signi cant for

102 Toumlin, Cosmopolis , p. 83. For Donnes religion, see Alison Shell and ArnoldHunt, Donnes religious world, inThe Cambridge Companion to John Donne , ed. AchsahGuibbory (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2006), pp. 6582.

103 Donne, Sermon Preached at the Funeral of Sir William Cokayne . . . Dec. 12TH,1626, inThe Complete Poetry and Selected Prose of John Donne , p. 524.

104

Ibid., p. 526.


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the surprisingly commonplace context into which this new knowledgeis putthat such changes in the Heavens are signs of the universesmutability, that the only permanence men are offered is in an eternitybeyond the vicissitudes of time, and that the worlds evident decay andmans consequently urgent need to repent are directed by Godsprovidence.105 The new science of nature, instead of signaling prog-ress and advance as Bacon envisaged in his utopian thought, ratherreveals for Donne the overarching teleological and theological frame- work of time and history. His belief in the worlds decay exposes hiseschatological cosmology. Divine and not physical causality permeated

the fabric of the universe.The prevalence of all these fears, doubts, and anxieties is fullyapparent in two major works in which Donne further developed hisreaction to the New Philosophy,Ignatius His Conclave (1611), and the

First Anniversary (1611). These works, and others in Donnes corpus,are among the rst examples of the reaction to the new modes ofscienti c thought and imagination in the early modern period. Theythus offer an important clue to the disturbing effects of the NewPhilosophy of nature as well as to de nition and formation of religiousidentities during the early modern period.

a) Doubts and Anxieties:Ignatius His Conclave

Donnes knowledge of current scienti c thought as well as his reaction

to it are evident in the satirical workIgnatius His Conclave , a bitterdiatribe against St. Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Society of Jesus (Societas Jesu ) which was established on September 27, 1540.106 With the Devotions , this was the most popular of Donnes works duringhis life time. For our concern here, inIgnatius His Conclave , Donnedisplays his knowledge of the new astronomy.107 He reveals not only hisknowledge of the new Philosophy, but exposes the many fears anddoubts it caused. Here Donne employs the astronomers discoveriesand the frequent disillusionment they occasioned among his contem-poraries to demonstrate the futility of searching for truth when human

105 G. F. Waller, John Donnes Changing Attitudes to Time, inStudies in English litera- ture , 141:The English Renaissance (Winter, 1974), p. 84.

106 For Donnes satires, see Annabel Patterson, Satirical Writings: Donne in Shadows,in The Cambridge Companion to John Donne , pp. 11732.

107

Cof n, John Donne and the New Philosophy , p. 83.


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reason is unaccompanied by faith.108 Since scienti c innovation stoodin opposition to theological certainties in Donnes mind, he drew up along list of villains and villainies based on sinful innovations and dis-coveries, among them the pioneers of the New Philosophy.

Historically speaking, one of the reasons for the composition ofDonnes satire and his attack on the Jesuits was the shock caused bythe assassination of Henry IV of France on May 14, 1610 by FranoisRavaillac. Numerous pamphlets were published both in France andEngland attacking the Jesuits as the authors of the doctrine that vio-lence may be used against kings who resisted the temporal sovereignty

of the papacy.109 In this work, Donne continued his quarrel with theRoman Catholic Church, his purpose being primarily to ridiculethe Jesuits. The character of the composition is that of a Menippeansatire (named after the third century cynic and satirist Mennippus ofGadara), rhapsodic in nature, combining many different targetsof ridicule into a fragmented satiric narrative. The work is an anti-Catholic polemic, and with another polemic work,Pseudo-Martyr (1610), it testi ed to Donnes repudiation of Catholicism.

Ignatius His Conclave is not only a satire on Loyola and the Jesuits. Italso displays Donnes awareness of the new scienti c learning and hisreaction to it. More speci cally, it is not for its attack on the Jesuitsthat the book interested readers, but for its references to the newastronomy and the discoveries of Galileo and Kepler.110 The workshows how exact and up to date Donne was with the new philosophy,citing for example from Keplers De Stella in Cygno (1606), and refer-

ring to GalileosSidereus Nuncius , published only a year before Donnessatire appeared.The title of the work conveys its content: Ignatius His Conclave: or,

His Inthronisation in a late Election in Hell.111 It represents IgnatiusLoyola as a claimant to the highest place in the infernal hierarchyagainst all other Antichristian Heroes (19) and other pretenders to

108

R. Chris Hassel Jr. DonnesIgnatius His Conclave and the New Astronomy,ModernPhilology 68 (May 1971), p. 329.109 Evelyn M. Simpson,A Study of the Prose Works of John Donne (Oxford: Clarendon

Press, 1948), p. 192.110 Ibid., 192.111 The full title runs as follow: Ignatius his Conclave: or, His Inthronisation in a late

Election in Hell: Wherin many things are mingled by way of Satyr. Concerning TheDisposition of Jesuites. The Creation of a new Hell, The establishing of a Church in theMoone. There is also added an Apology for Jesuites. All dedicated to the two adversary

Angels, which are protectors of the Papall Consistory, and of the Colledge of Sorbon.


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such a place, like Copernicus, Paracelsus, and Machiavelli. Essentially,the work is a travel account, a cosmic journey in Heaven and in Hell. As in other travel accounts of the period, Donne was hungrily carriedto nd new places, never discovered before such as the inner roomesin Hell (9, 7). This pursuit of new geographical discoveries led Donneto explore further and further the inwards places in Hell, until hesaw a secret place (9) in which all the important innovators of the world were gathered around Lucifer.Ignatius His Conclave is a cosmic voyage, a journey which ends with an ethnography and geographyof Hell and a presentation of its principal occupantsLucifer and

St. Ignatius Loyola. According to the plot, the author is transported in an ecstasy toanother world. There he encounters several important innovatorsand discoverers, mostly of the sixteenth century, who because of pro-ducing new matter, (11) or new theoriesamong them most notablyCopernicus, Paracelsus, Machiavelli, and Columbusare seekingadmission to Lucifers domain in Hell. All these innovators and dis-coverers are competing before Lucifer. On the stage, next to him, isIgnatius Loyola, the founder of the Jesuit order, hence a spiritual innovator, who troubles and subverts the world. Hell is thus identi ed withradical, new threatening innovations and discoveries; to Hell onlythey had title, which had so attempted any innovation in this life andthus gave an affront to all antiquitie by propagating new opinionsdirectly contrary to all established before (9). The gures thatDonne selects to people his Hell are all men of the sixteenth century,

all Catholics, and all in some way innovators. The rst four treated,Copernicus, Paracelsus, Machiavelli, and Columbus could be calledinnovators on the grand scale.112

The scene is laid in Hell, in the remotest part of Satans eternal Chaos (9), where Emperour Sathan, Lucifer, Belzebub, Leviathan, Abaddon(19) dwell. In this hellish space a special room is reserved for innova-tors, or Antichristian Heroes (19) who compete among themselves asto who will sit on the Throne of Hell or at the right hand of Satan. He who will convince Satan that he was the principall Innovator (95), orthat his new matter was the biggest innovation ever perpetrated willbe awarded the throne. Thus Donnes geography of Hell is the geogra-phy of sinning. In this context of discoveries and innovations weencounter also the proponents of the New PhilosophyCopernicus,Kepler, and Galileo. Ignatius disputes with them and with a large

112

Healy, Introduction, inIgnatius His Conclave , p. xxix.


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number of other innovators and discoverers for Lucifers favor. Heis the chief speaker and throughout the work he demolishes the argu-ments of many innovators, such as Copernicus, Paracelsus, Machiavelli,Columbus, and Pope Boniface III, who in the seventh century claimedthe See of Romes superiority over all churches in Christendom. At theend of the satire, with Ignatius victory and his crowning as the highestinnovator, Lucifer suddenly experiences great fear of Ignatius abilitiesand thus dispatches him with the help of Galileo the Florentine to founda kingdom, a Lunatique Church in the new World, the Moone (81)on the pretext that Hell was not good enough for him.113

In such a catalogue of villains and villainies, the wide variety of innovations leading to sin and to theological uncertainty is the key to thesatire. The setting of the competition in the inmost regions of Hellre ected Donnes negative attitude toward new theories of all kinds.Donne held a fundamentalist view of the created universe andhistory.114 No wonder that all the innovators Donne gathered in Hellhad proposed theories contrary to the common, traditional knowledgeheld since antiquity until Donnes time:

only they had title, which had so attempted any innovation in this life, that theygave affront to all antiquities, and induced doubts, and anxieties, and scruples,and after, a libertie of believing what they would; at length established opinions,directly contrary to all established before. (9)

The text thus re ects a generalized anxiety about novelty.115 Lucifersspace becomes the most privileged domain of those who would beaccounted cultural innovators.116 The presence in Donnes Hell ofColumbus and Copernicus, for example, suggests their equivalenceas avatars of the new.117 Likewise, Mahomet [is] worthy of the nameInnovator because he produced a new matter or a new religion(11), and Paracelsus deserves the name of an Innovator (25) becauseof his attacks on Galen and the medicine of the Schools. Donnedemonizes novelty.

113 For the early modern English fascination with the moon, see Cressy, Early ModernSpace Travel and the English Man in the Moon.

114 Anthony Raspa, Theology and Poetry in Donnes Conclave, English Literary History 32 (Dec. 1965), p. 489.

115 Albanese,New Science, New World , p. 41.116 Ibid., p. 42.117

Ibid., p. 58.


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It is interesting to compare Donnes journey in Hell to nd thegreatest sinful innovators with Bacons attitude toward innovation anddiscovery inThe New Organon . Whereas Donne found discoverers andinnovators in the roomes in Hell (7), Bacon called upon the truesons of science to join with him in transforming the interpretation ofnature so that we may pass the ante-chambers of nature which innu-merable others have trod, and eventually open up access to the innerrooms. Both look for inner rooms in Hell or in nature, but whileDonne closed and sealed the gates of Hell upon the proponents ofinnovation and discovery, separating them from the sight or the face

of the world, Bacon would like to unveil the secrets of nature and bringabout a renewal of learning and the sciences.118 More speci cally,according to Bacon, the true and legitimate goal of the sciences is toendow human life with new discoveries and new resources.119 If Donneenjoyed the privilege of exploring the dark con nes of Hell, where thegreat innovators and explorers lurk, hiding from the light of daybecause of their sinful discoveries, Bacon established discovery andinnovations as the essence of scienti c enlightenment. In the roomsof Hell Donne discovered erroneous and sinful knowledge whichopposed all antiquities, inducing doubts, and anxieties, whileBacons discovery is based on the light of experience and experiment which are essential for the advancement and progress of learning.120

The satire begins with the author in a state of extasie (5), whichenables him to see the whole structure of Heaven and Hell, a refer-ence to John of Patmos, author ofRevelation , to whom was given the

power to reveal and proclaim to all the world the course of sacred,redemptive history, reaching a culmination at the end of time. Like- wise, Donnes voice is revelatory and prophetic; he claims that his stateof extasie provided him with the liberty to wander through all places,and to survey and reckon all the roomes, and all the volumes of theheavens, as well as all the roomes in Hell. Because of such a cosmic voyage, all the channels in the bowels of the Earth; and all the inhabit-ants of all nations, and of all ages were suddenly made familiar to me.(78) Signi cantly, in terms of Donnes attitude toward the NewPhilosophy, it was this state of ecstasy which granted him the privilege

118 Bacon,The New Organon , p. 30.119 Ibid., p. 66.120 It should be noted that in Bacons theory and practice of experimental science,

experiment is more than a method of discovery; it is an ordeal, a test of its subjectstrue nature. See John C. Briggs, Francis Bacon and the Rhetoric of Nature (Cambridge.,

MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 1989), p. 3.


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to roam the Heavens, a privilege he explicitly compares with that ofGalileo, Kepler, and Tycho Brahe. Yet, these new philosophers ofnature, he argued, shall hardly nd Enoch or Elias any where in theircircuit (7) in Heaven. Because scienti c innovators disregardedand despised divine prophecies in their study of astronomy, the newastronomical and cosmological system had no place for the prophets who symbolize the apocalyptic warriors of the Old and New Testament.The role of these prophetic gures cannot be assessed nor tested byexperience and experiment. In other words, the proponents of thenew astronomy and cosmology have no place or function in their sys-

tem for Enoch and Elijah. Scienti c thought and traditional religiousthought and belief are thus not compatible. Astronomical mechanicalphysics replaces eschatological cosmology.

The satire is set in a special room reserved for innovators who are vying for the throne at Satans right hand. Innovation was a sin becauseit gave affront to all antiquities, and induced doubts, and anxieties;thus innovators are in Hell. Ignatius spiritual innovation is the crown-ing sin. In this context of innovation and discovery, sin and error,Donnes negative reaction to the founders of early modern scienceand astronomy is very evident. Both the Jesuits and the astronomersare clearly damnable, audacious, arrogant innovators. That is why theyare all engaged in the same conclave, and that is what unites thesatire.121 Alongside religious and theological strife and controversyIgnatius spiritual innovation leading to sin and error, or Muhammadsinvention of a new religionthe pioneers of the New Philosophy are

guilty of introducing innovations and hence error and sin in terms ofthe traditional Christian worldview. In the special room reserved forinnovators, Donne spied a certainMathematitian [Copernicus], which till then had ben busied to nde, to deride, to detrudePtolomey(13). The same negative attitude toward mathematiciansand their innovations in regard of building new systems of the worldappeared in Robert BurtonsThe Anatomy of Melancholy , 1621, where he wrote: Our later Mathematicians have rolled all the stones that maybe stirred and fabricated new systems of the World, out of their ownDdalean heads.122 But to return to Copernicus in Donnes satire;he argues that the Polish astronomer and mathematician should becounted among the greatest innovators in the world since it was he

121 Hassel Jr. Donnes Ignatius His Conclave and the New Astronomy, p. 331.122 Robert Burton,The Anatomy of Melancholy , 1621, as cited by James Gleick,Isaac

Newton (New York: Vintage, 2003), p. 16.


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who turned the whole frame of the world, and hence became almosta new Creator (15). Copernicus indeed deserves an important placein Hell because his new cosmology has led to confusion and his newastronomical philosophy has brought uncertainty and anxiety with it. While Bacons imagined ship of learning sails past the old traditionalbounds of knowledge in the frontispiece to theNew Atlantis , for Donnethe New Philosophy is a sign of frailty and decay rather than of theprogress of human knowledge. Donnes geography is that of Hell, ofsin and innovation, Bacons of the new, of discovery, of progress andutopia, from theNew Organon to the New Atlantis .

Ignatius His Conclave unites Columbus and Copernicus, as damnableagents of the new. Donnes attitude toward theepisteme of the newscientia based on discovery and innovation appears here in its articula-tion of a demonized novelty. Because the new knowledge, science,is recognized as without precedent, without (classical or divine)authority, he regarded it as a sin.123 In the work, all the innovators were, at the literal level of their existence, historical records of evilintentions. Their religious and political institutions, their law andliterature, were all new matter as compared to traditional Christianteachings.124 Innovation is a sin. In the case of innovations in astron-omy this was all the more agrant since the new astronomical sciencerejected the traditional harmony attributed to the Heavens, which wasbased on the grand theological teleology of sacred order inherent inthe whole frame and the fabric of the universe.

What tipped the balance for Donne was that human novelties,

especially in natural philosophy, led directly to unfounded humanpretensions. Galileo, he wrote, hath summoned the other worlds, theStars to come nearer to him, and give him an account of themselves.Kepler hath received it into his care that no new thing should be done inheaven without his knowledge (7). Donne wrote about human inventionand pretension, and about the astronomers striving to play Godsrole in the Heavenly sphere. Alarmed by the potential intellectualrevolutions of the new science, he asked:

Hath your raising up of the earth into heaven, brought men to that con -dence, that they build new towers or threaten God againe? Or do they outof this notion of the earth, conclude, that there is no hell, or deny thepunishment of sin? (17)

123 Albanese,New Science, New World , pp. 5, 39.124

Raspa, Theology and Poetry in Donnes Conclave, p. 481.


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A century later, Alexander Pope expressed the same fear and anxietyregarding the new mechanical science of Newton and his disciples. Inhis An Essay on Man (c. 1730), Pope deplored the prominent rolehuman beings were assigning to themselves in the cosmos based onthe achievements of the new natural philosophy in nding the struc-ture of the universe, an undertaking that amounted to the dethroningof God and the assumption of his place in ordering the universe:

Go, wondrous creature! mount where science guides,Go, measure earth, weigh air, and state the tides;Instruct the planets in what orbs to run,Correct the old Time, and regulate the sun . . .125

Likewise, inGullivers Travels (1726) Swift denounced human pride ingeneral and scienti c arrogance in particular, which he thoughtincompatible with Christian charity and humility. Thus, despite thegap of a century between them, fear and anxiety caused by the NewPhilosophy were shared by Donne, Pope, and Swift alike.

Donnes placing of Copernicus, as well as other forerunners of theNew Philosophy, in Hell brings to mind Dantes portrayal of Epicurusseated among the heretics in theInferno , imagining him there becauseof his belief in the death of the soul and, hence, his atheism: Here inHell, all those who followed Epicurus trend / Are tombed with himbecause he held and thought / The soul dies when the body meets itsend.126 Likewise, in his picture Newton, 1795, Blake placed Newtonin a cave shrouded in darkness.127 From Dante to Blake, then, innova-tion was considered a grave sin and hence the forerunners of NewPhilosophy were excluded from the sight or the face of the world.

In Ignatius His Conclave , Donne shows his negative reaction to inven-tions at the expense of tradition, and, therefore of authority. In contrast,his contemporary, Bacon, defended the notion of invention and discov-ery as an important tool inThe Advancement of Learning , writing that itcannot be sound strange if sciences be no further discovered . . . if the

art itself of invention and discovery hath been passed over.128

In the125 Alexander Pope, An Essay on Man, II, 1934, in Alexander Pope, A Critical Edition

of the Major Works , ed. Pat Rogers (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1993), pp. 2812.126 Dante, Hell, Canto X, 1415, in Dante:The Divine Comedy , trans. Peter Dale

(London: Anvil Press, 1996), p. 40.127 See, John Cage, Blakes Newton, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 34

(1971), pp. 3727.128

Bacon,Of the Advancement of Learning , p. 118.


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Praise of Knowledge, Bacon claimed that invention is essential to thetaming of nature: Now we govern nature in opinions, but we are thrallto her in necessities. But if we would be led by her in invention, weshould command her in action.129 Later on, in theNovum Organum (1620), Bacon attempted to devise a new logic,New Organon , which would provide a universally appropriate model for the procedure ofscienti c discovery. The constant search for logic adapts the searcherfor the discovery of new knowledge. Bacon made discovery theprimary mode of human experience.130

In the preface toThe Advancement of Learning , Bacon tried to assuage

the fears and anxieties which Donne and various contemporarythinkers and theologians raised in face of the development of the NewPhilosophy. The aim ofThe Advancement was in part to free humanbeings from ignorance which appeared sometimes in the zeal and jealousy of divines. As for these divines, they claimed that knowl-edge is of those things which are to be accepted with great limitationand caution: that the aspiring to overmuch knowledge was the originaltemptation and sin whereupon ensued the fall of man: that knowledgehath in it somewhat of the serpent, and therefore where it entereth intoa man it makes him swell.131 Fifteen years later, in theNovum Organum ,Bacon had more harsh things to say about religious peoples negativereaction to the New Philosophy: the growth of natural philosophy hasbeen inhibited, since religion, which has the most enormous powerover mens mind, has been kidnapped by the ignorance and recklesszeal of certain persons, and made to join the side of the enemy. Yet

even Bacon had to admit, thus clearly af rming Donnes deep fears andanxieties, that religious people fear from example that movementsand changes in philosophy will invade religion and settle there.132 Donne is an exempli cation of this contention.

b) All Coherence Gone: The First Anniversarie

Donne shows the extent to which the newepistemeand scientia evidentin the development of the New Philosophy of nature contradicted

129 Bacon, The Praise of Knowledge, p. 36.130 Lisa Jardine, Francis Bacon: Discovery and the Art of Discourse (Cambridge: Cambridge

Univ. Press, 1974), pp. 6, 69, 170.131 Bacon,Of the Advancement of Learning , p. 6.132

Bacon,The New Organon , p. 75.


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consecrated traditional modes of religious thought and belief. This isagain apparent inAn Anatomie of the World (1611), written in the same year asIgnatius His Conclave . The following year theAnatomie was giventhe title of the First Anniversarie , after Donne had composed theSecondAnniversary calledOf the Progress of the Soul e in 1612. The immediatepurpose was to commemorate the death in December 1610 of fteen- year-old Elizabeth Drury, the daughter of his patrons, Sir Robert andLady Drury.133 Given the underlying thematic structure of the poems,the Anniversaries can be read together.

In the Anatomie , written for the rst anniversary of the death of

Elizabeth Drury, Donne described the decline of the world: Wherein,By occasion of the untimely death of Mistris Elizabeth Drury, the frailtyand the decay of this whole World is represented.134 In this workDonne took on the role of the herald of the worlds decay and ruin,urging the reader learnst thus much by our Anatomie (185, 371), which analyses the Sicke World (56) or in general the worlds condi-tion (219). The poem is a depiction of the terrible landscape of thefallen world. With this prophetic revelatory voice the author took onhimself the role of an English Elijah, proclaiming or prophesyingindeed the decay, decline, and destruction of order and value, hencethe eventual ruin of the world caused by the new Philosophy (237).Moreover, at the end of theAnatomie Donne took on himself the greatOf ce of Moses (468, 463), announcing the need to y from thedoomed world of Egypt. This same glorious prophetic vision appearedalso at the end of theSecond Anniversary , Of the Progress of the Soule ,

where Donne imagines himself The Trumpet, at whose voice thepeople came (528),135 that is, the trumpet of the Book of Revelation,proclaiming the need to forsake this fallen, doomed earth, and enterGods heavenly Kingdom. It is interesting to compare this prophetic vision with that of Bacon who in theNew Organon compared himself toColumbus, the discoverer of new worlds and treasures of knowledge.Bacon was con dent that his Interpretation of Nature would discovernew worlds exactly as Columbus was con dent that new lands andcontinents, beyond those previously known, could be found becauseof his geographical discoveries.136

133 Jonathan F. S. Post, Donnes Life: A Sketch, inThe Cambridge Companion to John Donne , p. 12.

134 Donne, First Anniversary , p. 229.135 John Donne,The Second Anniversary: Of the Progress of the Soule , 1612, in Grierson, I,

p. 266.136

Bacon,The New Organon , pp. 15, 77.


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Whereas inIgnatius His Conclave Donne claimed that new inven-tions and the New Philosophy led to the destruction of theological andreligious certainty by giving affront to all antiquities, and induceddoubts, and anxieties, and scruples, and after, a libertie of believing what they would; at length established opinions, directly contrary to allestablished before (9), in theAnatomie he moved further, declaringthat the And new Philosophy calls all in doubt (237), and constitutesan integral part of the decay and decline of the world as a whole. TheNew Philosophy not only shakes the foundation of knowledge, ofepistemological and theological integrity, but also the very founda-

tions of the world by leading to its decline and ruin. The same senseof all coherence gone gures inThe Progress of the Soule , the SecondAnniversarie . The twoAnniversaries separated by a year are organized bya theological teleology of order: in the First Anniversary we see thedescent of sin in the scale of being from the angels to nature, or theeffects of the Fall which brought death into the world. In theSecondAnniversary we see the rise of man on the scale of being to virtue andHeaven, or lessons of the Fall that concern his progress.137 It is inthis grand theological and philosophical context that one may placeDonnes reaction to the new science of nature and its disturbing effectson traditional belief.

The theme of the decline of the world was very common at thisperiod in England,138 as well as elsewhere in Europe; in this declineand last days of the World, wrote Michael de Montaigne.139 The ideathat the world is decayinga notion inherited from the Middle Ages

was part of the Renaissance cosmic order. This was also Donnes mean-ing of the word world in the poem: in theAnniversaries we arereminded that world as a name is related to cosmos, meaning order,harmony, system as opposed to chaos.140 Indeed, social and politicalchanges as well as religious and ideological transformations greatlycontributed to this sense of losing the harmony and order of thecosmos. Donne was not alone in his gloomy description of the declineand fall of the world. Yet he was unique in ascribing this decline anddecay to the rise of the New Philosophy. In Donnes thought, the New

137 George Williamson, The Design in Donnes Anniversaries,Modern Philology 3(Feb. 1963), p. 188.

138 Victor Harris,All Coherence Gone (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1949).139 Michel de Montaigne,An Apology or Raymond Sebond (London: Penguin Classics,

1993), p. xli.140

Williamson, The Design in Donnes Anniversaries, p. 188.


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Philosophy of nature was one of the main sources for the evidentdecline in the harmony of the traditional sacred order.

In the First Anniversary Donne found himself amidst the chaos of aruined universe141:

The Sun is lost, and thearth, and no mans witCan well direct him where to look for it. (2078)

In the second the picture is radically different. The ruined universedescribed in the rst poem is restored. Elizabeth Drurys soul is calledto the Triumphant Church in Heaven (101) and there enjoys Godspresence (451). On the second anniversary of her death the poetcould write:

Thou art the Proclamation; and I amThe trumpet, at whose voice the people came. (5278)142

If Ignatius His Conclave is an attack on the pioneers of modernscienti c thought,An Anatomie of the World reveals the great extent to

which the new natural philosophy had transformed the traditionalreligious view of the world and the universe. It also shows the imprintof Donnes wide knowledge of the new astronomy. Much of the imag-ery in this poem is derived from new scienti c learning. One can ndhere a long list of intellectual shifts which threaten traditional views,until indeed, as the poet laments, the outcome is that Tis all in peeces,all cohaerence gone. (213) That is, all order and harmony achievedby old, traditional astronomical and cosmological world picture wasgone, such as the view that the earth is the center of the universe,along with the theological implications; the doctrine of the inalterabil-ity of the Heavens; the existence of the traditional solid orbs; andso on. In this poem one further nds Donnes engagement with newscienti c ideas, the New Philosophy as he called it. TheAnatomie s aimis to provide an analysis of the Sicke World (56), and there Donneportrayed the dismay caused by the new science of nature:

And freely men confesse that this worlds spent, When in the Planets, and the Firmament They seeke so many new; then see that thisIs crumbled out againe to his Atomies.Tis all in peeces, all cohaerence gone; All just supply, and all Relation. (20914)

141 Ibid., p. 102.142

Donne, Of the Progress of the Soule, in Grierson, I, p. 266.


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These lines are not a meditation on the evils of the world aimed atencouraging the reader to repudiate the sick world of nature, the worlds whole frame (191) in favor of the world of grace. This is notmerely evidence ofcontemptus mundi for the sake of the glories ofparadise. For Donne shows to what extent new scienti c thoughthad pervaded the imagination and in uenced existence. In this sense,his poem is truly an Anatomie of the world describing a cosmosof order and harmony profoundly and radically transformed anddegenerated. The main theme of the work is an Anatomie of theSicke World.

In face of the death of Elizabeth Drury in 1610, the source of thepoem, Donne understood the fragility of human beings. But he trans-posed this gloomy vision to the world as a whole,

Then, as mankinde, so is the worlds whole frameQuite out of joint, almost created lame (1912)

One of the main reasons for the worlds decay (377) and the destruc-

tion of traditional coherence is the new scienti c learning which hasshattered the traditional worlds whole frame and led to the destruc-tion of heaven and earth. The First Anniversary deals with the dispro-portion and decay of the cosmos. An important dimension of the decayis the distressing evidence of distortion and disruption of the Ptole-maic cosmic order caused by the new astronomical philosophy.143 Because of astronomical discoveries the harmonious Ptolemaic systemhas become unreliable and a target of doubts and suspicion. The decayof the world is thus most evident in the destruction of beauty and har-mony caused by new astronomical discoveries:

For the worlds beauty is decaid, or gone,Beauty, thats colour, and proportion. (24950)

Moreover,

We thinke the heavens enjoy their Sphericall,Their round proportion embracing all. (2512)

But now astronomers have found New starres, and old doe vanishfrom our eyes: As thought heavn suffered earthquake, peace or war

143 Barbara K. Lewalski, Donnes Anniversaries and the Poetry of Praise: The Creation of a

Symbolic Mode (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1973), p. 254.


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(2601). All the proportions upon which the harmony and order ofthe heavenly sphere is based have vanished:

So, of the Starres which boast that they doe runneIn Circle still, none ends where he begun. All their proportions lame, it sinkes, it swells. (2757)

The new celestial physics of the astronomers have brought with themcosmic distortions as and coercions:

Man hath weaved out a net, and this net throwne

Upon the Heavens, and now they are his own.Loth to go up the hill, or labour thusTo go to heaven, we make heaven come to us. We spur, we reine the stares, and in their raceTheyre diversly content tobey our pace. (2804)

In Donnes work, human pretensions to rule and measure the worldlead to the feeling that the worlds whole frame is Quite out of joint

(1912). The poets deep sense of all coherence gone is thus directlyposited against the harmony embodied in the gure of ElizabethDruryHarmony was shee (313). Elizabeth Drury is praised as themeasure of symmetry because, by re ecting the goodness of creatednature, here regenerate soul embodies the very principle of propor-tion, harmony itself.144 She is placed also in the context of time andhistory; her death led to the loss of harmony, evidence of the declineof the world from the primordial state of innocence and purity. Decayis also evident in the disruption, the near cessation, of the in uenceof heaven upon earth, of the order of grace upon the order ofnature.145 In the traditional Christian teleology of nature and history,the order of grace conditions the course of heaven and earth from thebeginning to the end of time. But now, with Elizabeths death, natureis seen almost devoid of the in uence of grace.146

Elizabeth Drurys death is used by the poet to expound the gloomystate of decay of the world to which the New Philosophy has contrib-uted so heavily by taking away harmony, beauty, and coherence, fromthe world. Deprived of goodness and grace, the only possible way forthe regenerated soul is indeed spiritual life in heaven. In the Elegie on

144 Ibid., p. 255.145 Ibid., p. 258.146

Ibid., p. 259.


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Prince Henry (1613) Donne again combined the themes of personalloss and the dissolution of the old world system:

If then least moving of the center, makeMore, then if whole hell belchd, the world to shake, What must this do, center distracted so,That we see not what to believe or know? (214)147

As with the death of Elizabeth Drury, here too Prince Henrys deathcaused a general confusion in the poets imagination whereby themoving of the center led the world to shake. From the pioneers ofthe New Philosophy Donne learned that trees would be uprooted,birds frustrated in their ight, and animals precipitated if the air actu-ally whirled about as the new philosophers teach.148 He wrote thus inFeasts and Revells,

And where the doctrine new That the earth movd, this day would make it true;For every part to dance and revell goes.

They tread the ayre, and fal not where they rose. (1869)149

147 Donne, Elegie upon the untimely death of the incomparable Prince Henry, inEpicedes and Obseqvies Upon The Deaths of sundry Personage, Grierson, I, p. 268.

148 Cof n, John Donne and the New Philosophy , p. 114.149 Donne, Feasts and Revells, in Epithalamions, or Marriage Songs, Grierson, I,

p. 139.


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125

Chapter IV

GOD OF ABRAHAM AND NOT OF PHILOSOPHERS:

Pascal against the PhilosophersDisenchantment of the World

I cannot forgive Descartes: in his whole philosophy he would like to do withoutGod; but he could not help allowing him a ick of the ngers to set the world inmotion: after that he had no more use for God.

Blaise Pascal,Penses

Pascal mentioned the opinions of Copernicus with disdain, but his workre ects the confusion of a theologian exiled from the orb of the Almagest andlost in the Copernican universe of Kepler and Bruno.

Jorge Luis Borges, Pascals Sphere, 1964

When dealing with natural things we will, then, never derive any explanationfrom the purposes which God or nature may have had in view when creatingthem [and we shall entirely banish from our philosophy the search for nalcauses]. For we should not be so arrogant as to suppose that we can share inGods plans.

Descartes,Principia Philosophiae (Principles of Philosophy) , 1644

[T]he only principles which I accept, or require, in physics are those of geome-try and pure mathematics; these principles explain all natural phenomena, andenable us to provide quite certain demonstrations regarding them.

Descartes,Principia Philosophiae (Principles of Philosophy) , 1644

Intellectual shifts which took place in the early modern period led tothe disenchantment of the world. Nature was demysti ed and creationemptied of theological and teleological signi cance. Reaction to thisprofound transformation is most evident in the thought of BlaisePascal (16231662). For Pascal the New Philosophy, especially that of


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Ren Descartes (15961650) and his mechanical philosophy of nature,con rmed the undermining of religion. With confusion and bewilder-ment Pascal looked at the development of a rationalist natural science which threatened to shatter the whole traditional medievalimagomundi . Pascals thought re ects not only fears and anxieties but alsothe complex relationships and growing tensions between religion andscience in the early modern period as evidenced in hisApology of theChristian Church (Apologie de la religion Chrtienne ), known as thePenses , where he denounced among others Cartesian philosophy. Pascalsthought closely re ects the perturbing effects of the new science of

nature on traditional de nitions and formations of religious identitiesduring early modernity. Like John Donne, he exposed the Janus face ofthe new science of nature, the perils and risks that the New Philosophyposed for traditional religious modes of thought and belief.

Discoveries in astronomy and consequently the decentering of theearth inspired Pascal with fear and anxiety: The eternal silence ofthese in nite spaces lls me with dread, he wrote, and the newPhysicaCoelestis of Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo, led him to an existentialsense of exile and alienation in the cosmos: when I survey the wholeuniverse in its dumbness and man left to himself with no light, asthough lost in this corner of the universe . . . I am moved to terror.This sense of loss, alienation, and isolation, encapsulates the seriousrami cations that an open and in nite universe, as against a closedand nite one, was felt to have on the human condition: I see theterrifying spaces of the universe hemming me in, and I nd myself

attached to one corner of this vast expanse without knowing whyI have been put in this place. Pascal is indeed the master of anxiety:Mans condition he wrote is anxiety.

Pascals reaction to thePhysica Coelestis re ects the loss that humanssuffered with the transformation from the nite into the in niteuniverse. Gone is the marvelous universe of Dante, the gloriousanthropocentric, geocentric vision of the cosmos based on a teleologyof sacred order and structured according to the unfolding drama ofhuman salvation and redemption. Instead, Pascal confronted an alienuniverse and a bewildering world of nature. He found himself engulfedin the in nite immensity of spaces of which I am ignorant, and whichknow me not, wondering: Who has put me here? By whose order anddirection have this place and time been allotted to me? Unable todiscern Gods signature in the fabric of the world, Pascal lamented:I look around in every direction and all I see is darkness. Nature has

nothing to offer me that does not give rise to doubt and anxiety.


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God of Abraham and Not of Philosophers 127

Yet, it was not only the in nite abyss of spaces that lled Pascal withawe and dread but also the philosophers and scholars on earth who were constructing new rationalist philosophy of nature. Chief amongthem was Descartes. Like Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo, Descartessthought exposed the con ict between obsolete scholasticism and thenew rational natural philosophy, thus contributing to the tensionsbetween the ideal of scienti c exposition and the philosophy of theSchools. Descartess effort to constructMathesis universalis a universalknowledge (scientia ) and a mathematical understanding of the worldconceived as a complete mechanical system, con icted with scholastic

natural philosophy. Addressing many of the inherent weaknesses ofmedieval thought, Descartes presented new modes of perception which implied the refutation of earlier theories: his science was to bebased on mathematical principles, in contrast to the qualitative explan-atory apparatus of his predecessors, and his model was a mechanisticexplanation which avoided reference to nal, teleological causes andpurposes. With a mechanical causality replacing the theological andteleological, Cartesian philosophy had a substantial degree of auton-omy as compared with scholastic subordination of physics to theology.It was thus in con ict with the revealed truths of the Bible, not leastbecause Descartes claimed that after the creation of the world God will never perform any miracle and will not disrupt in any way theordinary course of nature.

Pascals reaction to Cartesian philosophy shows the growing tensionbetween religion and science in early modern history as well as the fear

and concern the New Philosophy aroused in religious circles. Pascalmet Descartes twice in Paris during the fall of 1647 and he had a goodknowledge of Descartess writings. Both, it should be remembered,contributed to the development of science: Pascal with respect to theconstruction of a mechanical calculator, considerations on probabilitytheory, the study of uids, and the clari cation of concepts such aspressure and vacuum; Descartes as an original physicist and physiolo-gist. Today he is called the father of modern mathematics because ofhis in uence on geometry and algebra.

Apart from their shared scienti c interests, Descartes and Pascalboth underwent an important conversion experience, a mysticalmoment which was essential to their intellectual development. Thesespiritual experiences were by no means analogous events. Rather, thisspiritual experience launched their respective careers on a con ictingcourse, leading eventually to opposing vocations. On the night of the

10th of November 1619, at the age of 23, Descartes had an epiphany


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which convinced him that he had discovered the foundations of amarvelous science. This was the beginning of his effort to construct aPlan of Universal Science , Mathesis universalis , a whole new science which would replace the scholastic philosophy of nature. Similarly, in 1654,at the age of 31, on the night of November 23, Pascal underwent aremarkable religious conversion which transformed his whole existence. A vision invaded his inner being and forced itself upon him like anecstatic revelation. Vividly sensing the presence of divine grace, herepudiated the rationalist God of the philosophers in favor of theGod of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, and from that moment

on he dedicated his life to the writing of anApology of the ChristianChurch , the Penses . This apologetic project dominated Pascal until hisdeath in 1662. After his conversion moments Descartes moved fromfaith to reason, Pascal from reason to faith.

An important dimension of Pascals apologetic project was a vehement opposition to Cartesian natural philosophy, psychology, andepistemology, thus offering important evidence of the growingtensions within religious circles in face of the new science of nature.Descartes useless and uncertain, wrote Pascal, meaning not onlyDescartess notion of a rational mechanical God but also the Cartesianmechanistic theater of the world of nature as well as its dream de reduc- tione scientia ad mathematicam . Scienti c theism, the basis of the newrational philosophy of nature where God is only the guarantee ofknowledge but not the savior and redeemer of the Bible, constituted aserious threat to traditional Christian religious thought and belief.

1. T E S T I S F M

For Pascal the science of his time has simply con rmed the disen-chantment of the world.1 He gazed with alarm and bewilderment at

1 Jean Khalfa, Pascals Theory of Knowledge, inThe Cambridge Companion to Pascal ,ed. Nicolas Hammond (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2003), p. 139. For Pascalslife and thought, see Marvine R. OConnell,Blaise Pascal: Reasons of the Heart (GrandRapids: Eerdmans, 1997); John R. Cole,Pascal: The Man and His Two Loves (New York:NYU Press, 1995); Francis X, J. Coleman,Neither Angel Nor Beast: The Life and Work ofBlaise Pascal (New York: Routledge, 1986); A. J. Krailsheimer,Pascal (New York: Hill and Wang, 1980); Roger Hazelton,Blaise Pascal: The Genius of his Thought (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1974); Jam Miel,Pascal and Theology (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ.

Press, 1969); Graeme Hunter, Blaise Pascal, inA Companion to Early Modern Philosophy ,


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the vast, in nite space which thePhysica Coelestis of Copernicus, Kepler,and Galileo presented. The heavens, wrote Copernicus, are immenseby comparison with the earth, and the earth is related to the heavensas a point to a body, and a nite to an in nite magnitude.2 Pascalechoes this in his: The whole visible world is only an imperceptibledot in natures ample bosom (L 199).3 He well understood that theimmense expansion of the universe carried tremendous implicationsnot only for the human condition but also for traditional religiousthought. More concretely, it meant fear and anxiety: The eternalsilence of these in nite spaces frightens me (L 201). He thus felt con-

fused in the face of the in nity of the universe, of shaking traditionalcosmological modes of knowledge, and of the decentering of theearth. Pascal employs astronomical references to express feelings ofdread, terror, and alienation. For him, the heavenly cosmos does notaf rm Gods existence, but instead reveals an immense abyss from which He is absent or hidden.4

The new astronomys in nite abyss of the universe aroused fears,doubts, and anxieties: I see the terrifying spaces of the universehemming me in, and I nd myself attached to one corner of this vastexpanse without knowing why I have been put in this place (L 427).Not only do human beings nd themselves lost, exiled, and alienated

ed. Steven Nadler (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2002), pp. 96112; Michael Moriarty, EarlyModern French Thought: The Age of Suspicion (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2003), and

Fallen Nature, Fallen Selves: Early Modern French Thought(Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press,

2006), Matthew W. Maguire,The Conversion of Imagination: From Pascal through Rousseauto Tocqueville(Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 2006); Matthew L. Jones,The GoodLife in the Scienti c Revolution: Descartes, Pascal, Leibniz, and the Cultivation of Virtue (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), and Lucien Goldman,The Hidden God:A Study of Tragic Vision in the Penses of Pascal and the Tragedies of Racine(London:Routledge, 1977).

2 Copernicus,On the Revolution , trans. Edward Rosen (Baltimore: Johns HopkinsUniv. Press, 1978), pp. 1314. On the new science of nature, see Brian Baigrie, TheNew Science: Kepler, Galileo, Mersenne, inA Companion to Early Modern Philosophy ,

ed. Nadler, pp. 4559.3 Pascal,Penses , trans. A. J. Krailsheimer (London: Penguin, 1995). This edition,marked L in the text, is based on the rst copy of Pascals work. In the following, allreferences to PascalsPenses , unless otherwise stated, are to this edition. On the natureand character of PascalsPenses , see Nicolas Hammond, PascalsPensesand the artof persuasion, inThe Cambridge Companion to Pascal , pp. 23552, and Jacob Meskin,Secular Self-Con dence, Postmodernism, and Beyond: Recovering the ReligiousDimension of PascalsPenses , Journal of Religion (Oct. 1995), pp. 487508.

4 Ernest Fontana, Patmore, Pascal, and Astronomy,Victorian Poetry 41.2 (2003),

p. 278.


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within the in nite and inscrutable cosmos, but they are unable to ndor recognize God in the structure of the universe:

When I survey the whole universe in its dumbness and man left to himself withno light, as though lost in this corner of the universe, without knowing whoput him there, what he has come to do, what will become of him when he dies,incapable of knowing anything, I am moved to terror. (L 198)

These words testify more than anything else to the perception that thetraditional classical and medieval concept of the cosmosin thesense of a completed geo-centered whole organized according to a well-de ned theological teleology of orderhad lost its meaning andsigni cance.

So powerful and gloomy was this state of fear and trembling in faceof the whole universe in its dumbness that Pascal even wonderedwhether God has left any traces of himself in the order of creation(L 198). Indeed he found himself in a limbo without a sure positive ornegative answer to that important question, which in turn greatly

enhanced his miserable condition:I look around in every direction and all I see is darkness. Nature has nothing tooffer me that does not give rise to doubt and anxiety. If I saw no signs there ofa Divinity I should decide on a negative solution: if I saw signs of a Creatoreverywhere I should peacefully settle down in the faith. But, seeing too much todeny and not enough to con rm, I am in a pitiful state. (L 429)

The sense of loneliness and confusion within an alien and silent universe is further compounded by the unintelligibility of nature: God,Pascal believed, is not manifested, but irretrievablyhidden in nature.5 The whole of creation, therefore, heaven and earth alike, is unintelli-gible and inscrutable. Pascal of course was more than eager to know if God had left his signature on the world. Gloomily, however, headmitted he had no answer to that question. His is a hidden God

Deus absconditus as against Deus Revelatus , the God who constantlyreveals His glory and presence in the creation.6 An essential doctrine of the New Philosophy was the intelligibility ofnature and of the worldthe whole of creation was deemed a labora-tory for the researches of the rationalist natural philosophers. But for

5 Ashworth, Jr. Catholicism and Early Modern Science, inGod & Nature: Historical Essays on the Encounter between Christianity and Science , eds. Lindberg and Numbers,p. 144.

6

On Pascals hidden God, see Goldman,The Hidden God .


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human condition is doomed to be obscured by a hidden God whosemind and creation are inscrutable. In such an unintelligible universeand inscrutable God, Pascal has only a very gloomy vision for himself:

Just as I do not know whence I come, so I do not know whither I am going. All Iknow is that when I leave this world I shall fall ever into nothingness or unto thehands of a wrathful God, but I do not know which of these two states is to be myeternal lot. Such is my state, full of weakness and uncertainty. (L 427)

Certainly, in face of a wrathful God it is hard if not impossible to ndbenevolence in the world, and human beings portion is judgmentand annihilation.

With these gloomy words Pascal delineated sciences Janus face; thedevelopment of new astronomical theories deprived the universe ofany inherent theological teleology of order. The new astronomicalin nite space, wrote Borges, appalled Pascal:

the absolute space that inspired the hexameters of Lucretius, the absolute spacethat had been a liberation for Bruno, was a labyrinth and an abyss for Pascal.He hated the universe, and yearned to adore God. But God was less real to himthan the hated universe. He was sorry that the rmament could not speak; hecompared our lives to those of shipwrecked men on a desert island. He felt theincessant weight of the physical world; he felt confused, afraid, and alone.8

Pascal indeed mentioned the opinions of Copernicus with disdain,but his work re ects the confusion of a theologian exiled fromthe orb of the Almagest and lost in the Copernican universe of Keplerand Bruno.9

Pascal was not alone in being frightened and disturbed by thesilence of the New Philosophy about the meaning of the created orderas well as of human life and destiny. Three hundred years later thephysicist and Nobel laureate Erwin Schrdinger said,

Most painful is the absolute silence of all our scienti c investigations towards ourquestions concerning the meaning and scope of the whole display [of the worldof nature]. The more attentively we watch it, the more aimless and foolish itappears to be. The show that is going on obviously acquires meaning only withregard to the mind that contemplates it.10

8 Jorge Luis Borges, Pascals Sphere, 1951, inOther Inquisitions, 19371952 (Austin:University of Texas Press, 1964), pp. 89.

9 Jorge Luis Borges, Pascal, inOther Inquisitions, p. 93.10 Erwin Schrdinger, Mind and Matter, 1956, inWhat is Life? With Mind and Matter

& Autobiographical Sketches (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2006 [1967]), p. 138.


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2. P P

Pascal was not a philosopher; he was rst and foremost a theologian;he always uses the term philosophy in a pejorative sense.11 Differen-tiating himself from the philosophers, Pascal declared To have notime for philosophy is to be a true philosopher (L 513), and to mockphilosophy is to do real philosophy.12 Chief among the philosophershe attacked were Michel de Montaigne (15331592) and Descartes;Montaigne because he believed in human ability, self-suf ciency, andself-knowledge, to the point where religion was unnecessary,13 andDescartes because by the sciences Descartes understands scientia ,that is to say, those kinds of knowledge that are capable of logical dem-onstration or all knowledge open to demonstrative or logical proof.14 Pascal rejected Descartes and other rationalist philosophers optimism with respect to human reason and its ability to comprehend thestructure of the world. Consequently, he was more than skepticalof their effort to construct a coherent, plausible natural philosophy which might be able to explain the fabric of the universe. Aimingto show the folly of human knowledge and philosophy (L 408),Pascal rejected the philosophers principles of truth, namely reasonand the senses:

Man is nothing but a subject full of natural error that cannot be eradicatedexcept through grace. Nothing shows him the truth, everything deceives him.The two principles of truth, reason and senses, are not only both not genuine,but are engaged in mutual deception. The senses deceive reason through falseappearance . . . They both compete in lies and deception. (L 45)

The Penses may be regarded as a monumental objection toDescartes overwhelming optimistic view of the capacities of the humanmind.15 Indeed, as Voltaire wrote, the spirit in which Pascal wrotethe Penses was to portray man in a hateful light. He is determined todepict us all as evil and unhappy . . . He vili ed the human race

11 Moriarty, Early Modern French Thought: The Age of Suspicion , p. 1, n. 1.12 Ibid., p. 1, n. 1.13 For the relationship between Montaigne and Pascal, see Pierre Force, Innovation

and Spiritual Exercise: Montaigne and Pascal, Journal of the History of Ideas(2005),pp. 1735; and Henry Phillips, Pascals reading and inheritance of Montaigne andDescartes, inThe Cambridge Companion to Pascal , pp. 2039.

14 Pauline Phemister,The Rationalists: Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz (Cambridge: Polity,2006), p. 21.

15

Phillips, Pascals reading and inheritance of Montaigne and Descartes, p. 34.


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eloquently.16 Moreover, Pascal believed that reasons last step is therecognition that there are an in nite number of things which arebeyond it, and if natural things are beyond it, w

Documents

Avihu Zakai-Jonathan Edwards' Philosophy of Nature_ the Re-Enchantment of the World in the Age of Scientific Reasoning-Continuum International Publishing Group (2010)