The Nickel Man Read online

  AESOP: Let’s leave my good and bad qualities there, and get to the point.

  JOUROUFLE, emphatically: I am here and I shall speak for Newton.

  “Nature wearied of the importunity of men during so many centuries, and errors that disfigured the truth, only demanding an interpreter worthy of her. But such an interpreter could only be a unique benefit to that nature, and it was necessary for her to provide him; finally, no longer able to resist the interested wishes of so many mortals, and wanting to unveil herself entirely, she summoned and produced Newton.” Oh, Monsieur Aesop, what a man was Newton! And what a fine spectacle it was to see that scientist smoothing the initially-fluid Earth, prescribing the form that it ought to receive of equilibrium and calculating the power of the stars over the waters of its consolidated mass, enchaining those very stars to an immobile center by a force that Kepler had imagined, explaining all the phenomena of nature and tracing those phenomena back to the simple and unique cause from which they derived. What a distance between him and his great precursors, as much for the universality as the accuracy of his ideas! The latter have had to blush at numerous failures, and their glory has been stained by a few errors, but according to us, Newton has produced only truths, because, “his genius having transported him to the center of nature, he has been a tranquil spectator there, and has recounted what he has seen.”12 Let us breathe for a moment.

  PEMBERTON: What eloquence!

  PLUCHE: What amphigory!

  VOLTAIRE: What sublime speech!

  BERNARDIN DE SAINT-PIERRE: What pompous speech!

  HEROMONDAS: That’s declaiming Bailly really well.

  JOUROUFLE: I’ve got my breath back. I’ll continue. Oh, Monseigneur Aesop, if you could only conceive all the sublime ideas of our great geometer, see through his eyes like us, think with his own intelligence, reason in his fashion, you would admit without difficulty that it is in Newton’s head that all human intelligence has lived. In fact, I see that scientist towering like an oak in the midst of all the great men who have existed, dominating them all by the strength of his brain, embracing everything with the extent of his genius, “endowed above all with a wholeness in ideas, like the one who resides in the universe, assembling before him all phenomena, tracing them back to the causes that were reserved to him, and developing in an admirable manner the general phenomenon of nature.”13 Oh, Monseigneur Aesop, how sweet and pleasing for us it would be to see your mind at the level of his sublime ideas. Then, yes, then, delighted with more and more admiration for your supreme merit, we would take pleasure in praising it without measure in our assemblies and charging it with renown by publishing its excellence everywhere.

  PEMBERTON: Can one say anything more true?

  BERNARDIN DE SAINT-PIERRE: Can one advance anything more false?

  JOUROUFLE: Shut up and I’ll conclude. Finally, Monseigneur Aesop, since, after what I’ve just said, it’s established that Seigneur Newton has grasped nature in action, and has enunciated nothing but the truth, in accordance with what Bailly says, I request the condemnation of the work entitled On the Search for the Truth in the Sciences, which has dared to sustain that the scientist I question was grossly mistaken.

  AESOP: Monsieur Jouroufle, you have just pronounced a pompous panegyric, but you have not articulated any fact that could provoke a condemnation.

  SGRAVESANDE: Is it not sufficient that we are sure that Newton was incapable of being mistaken, and that nature has revealed all her secrets to him? If you are in doubt, all the Newtonians here are ready to affirm it. In any case, have we not often put into the crucible of calculation the phenomena invoked by Newton in favor of his hypothesis, and after having operated following the genius of the great man, have we not recognized that his propositions were infallible?

  JOUROUFLE: Yes Monseigneur Aesop, that’s very true; I can assure you, word of Monsieur Jouroufle; for I have done all these calculations rapidly myself.

  SGRAVESANDE: What more is needed?

  AESOP: Sgravesande, your reasons are not convincing. Your manner of seeing and certain prejudices might have made you believe in Newton’s infallibility, but if you have nothing better to say I’ll pronounce, and acquit your adverse party.

  HEROMONDAS: Is that possible, in spite of the large number of grievances that we have to articulate against our adverse party?

  AESOP: Articulate these grievances then.

  HEROMONDAS: Here they are, then. Firstly, it is a fact that until now, it has been recognized that the terrestrial atmosphere has no other properties than transparency and elasticity, but by a signal malevolence, the text of On the Search for the Truth in the Sciences gives it in addition an optical property by which the apparent diameter of heavenly bodies is augmented by almost half. If we suffer that usurpation, everything about the planets—mass, volume, distance—is overturned, destroyed, and it would be necessary to reconstruct astronomy on new foundations, which would tend to pulverize our theories and systems, which we desire to be adopted permanently.

  AESOP: But in matters of astronomical and physical theory, does not everyone have the right to follow the one that appears most plausible to him?

  JOUROUFLE: Yes, in the lands of ignorance, but here we shall never permit it. Newton has spoken; Magister dixit. It is therefore necessary to be silent, no longer arguing but believing in his word, as we have done—and all under the penalty of being deemed ignorant and rendering oneself culpable of the most unworthy calumny against that divine geometer.

  AESOP: Where are you, Monsieur Jouroufle?

  JOURUFLE: I am in beautiful France.

  BERNARDIN DE SAINT-PIERRE: Monsieur Jouroufle, since you are in beautiful France, ought you not to do something in her favor, and above all, not seek to depreciate her by defending false hypotheses?

  JOUROUFLE: Certainly! When one has undertaken to sustain a thesis, it is necessary for one’s honor to sustain it until the end. Look, Monsieur Bernardin, you’re doubtless a man. Well, if I took it into my head to claim that you’re an animal with two feet and devoid of feathers, I would sustain it against everyone, and I would even go so far as to demonstrate that you are nothing but a plumed…cockerel!”

  BERNARDIN DE SAINT-PIERRE : A fine talent.

  PLUCHE: It’s that of a charlatan. But before going any further, I ask Monsieur le Président to permit me to make a few observations. First of all, I remark that Monsieur Jouroufle is reasoning very poorly in making Nature a moral, powerful and intelligent being, and advancing that she has established laws. Nature does not make them, she receives them, since she is merely a passive agent, and composes everything that there is in the universe: waters, rocks, lands, animals, plants and minerals, stars and planets. Now, all of that is incapable of imposing laws on the universe, for I think that Monsieur Jouroufle, who is part of that nature, has never cooperated, with all his genius, I don’t say in the creation of the entire world, but even in the formation of a single moss or grain of sand. Thus, nature, instead of being the legislatress in the vast space of the heavens, on the contrary, receives the laws that her Creator has given her, which she is obliged to follow exactly, without a single point of deviation. The jargon that Nature has done this, that Nature has wished that, and other phrases of the same species, which reek of materialism, is a ridiculous language, which science, for its honor, ought to banish forever from its writing and its assemblies, in order not to induce error in the weak and ignorant.

  Finally, since mention has been made of Newton’s infallibility, I summon my adverse party to declare whether that scientist has never been mistaken.

  SGRAVESANDE: Either way, what does it matter?

  PLUCHE: Since our adversaries do not want to reply categorically to my question, I ask the president, in order to clarify the matter, to deign to interrogate some other geometer who is able to speak according to his conscience, because, if Newton made an error once, it ought to be permissible for us to ask whether he might have been mistaken on other occasions.

  AE
SOP: I saw Maupertuis14 mediating not far away; let him be summoned.

  A PHYSICIST in the retinue: I’ll go and find him.

  Scene Eight

  The Preceding

  AESOP: Maupertuis will doubtless not be suspect to the two parties, since, on the one hand, he has embraced the theories of the English scientist throughout his life, and on the other, having terminated his career in the bosom of an austere virtue, he would not belie his last moments by betraying the truth. But here he is.

  Scene Nine

  The Preceding, Maupertuis, the Physicist

  AESOP: Illustrious Maupertuis, is it true that Newton was never mistaken?

  MAUPERTUIS: No, unfortunately, for his most enthusiastic partisans have been forced to admit that he was strangely mistaken in his calculation of the precession of the equinoxes,15 and that on the subject of the difficult problems offered by the system of the world, he was often given to uncertain observations.16 Furthermore, in the explanation of the delay of the tides in relation to the passages of the sun and moon, the reasoning of the scientist is unsatisfactory, and contrary to the results of a rigorous analysis.17 Finally, his theory of light is not sheltered from sane criticism. Newton claims that it only comes to us by emission, and several first-rate scientists have been convinced for a long time that that theory is erroneous.

  PLUCHE: Important admissions, which give us the right to doubt the infallibility of the English geometer and to believe instead the phenomena that give the lie to his hypotheses.

  SGRAVESANDE: I challenge those phenomena.

  AESOP: Why?

  SGRAVESANDE: Because those phenomena only came to us or were explained to us after we had established our hypotheses, in favor of which we invoke the law of prescription.

  AESOP: In the matter of scientific theories one cannot invoke the law of prescription, because it is a property of science to tend toward perfection and always to move forward.

  BERNARDIN DE SAINT-PIERRE: That is what is happening here. When Newton forged his theories, he did not give any thought to atmospheres, and never thought that by virtue of its optical property, our atmosphere augmented the apparent diameter of the heavenly bodies outside its bosom; thus, in discovering that optical property of the terrestrial atmosphere, the text of On the Search for the Truth in the Sciences seems to have enabled science to take a great step forward.

  AESOP: In fact, our atmosphere being diaphanous and convex, ought to enjoy the property of all the substances that have those two qualities.

  JOUROUFLE: Look, Seigneur Aesop, I don’t like to make you a liar because I know my duty, but how can you expect us to believe in that optical property of the terrestrial atmosphere, since we’ve never ever thought about it?

  AESOP: There’s no reason to reject a discovery because one has never imagined it. Tell me, Monsieur Jouroufle, before the discovery of magnifying glasses and telescopes, could one have reasonably sustained that those instruments could never magnify the objects at which one gazes through them?

  JOUROUFLE: Oh, no, Seigneur Aesop, I wouldn’t have sustained that. I’m not such a bad physicist.

  AESOP: But that’s what you’ve done, you and Newton. You haven’t thought about that magnifying property of our atmosphere, but does that mean that it ought not to exist? To affirm that, it would be necessary to prove that the optical property in question does not belong to the diaphanous convex substances among which our atmosphere is included.

  SGRAVESANDE: We’re incredulous.

  PLUCHE: President, since we’re summoned to defend the optical property of our atmosphere, we summon Sgravesande and his colleagues to tell us what makes the sun and the moon appear larger when they are rising or setting than when they reach their meridian?18

  PEMBERTON: You’re very demanding! What’s the point of that question?

  PLUCHE: To make you show your science as well as us.

  SGRAVESANDE: We don’t want to; you’re too curious.

  PLUCHE: Ah! You’ve been caught wanting, Messieurs?

  JOUROUFLE: My party caught wanting! Oh no, Monsieur Pluche, you’re mistaken, and if Monsieur de Sgravesande and Monsieur de Pemberton don’t want to reply, don’t you know that the learned Monsieur Jouroufle is here, who knows how a philosopher ought to proceed when he’s interrogated? Have I not before my eyes the example of the Philosopher Monsieur Galileo? Good people asked him one day why the water in the tube of a pump didn’t rise up beyond a certain height, since, according to him, nature had a horror of a void. Although he didn’t know the true cause of the phenomenon, which depended on the weight of the air, he replied without hesitation that nature only had a horror of a void up to a certain elevation, which filled those good people with admiration, who looked at him as an admirable genius. Now, it’s always necessary to follow the example of Monsieur Galileo, even when the explanation one gives is the antipodes of the truth. A bold response and not to be caught wanting, that’s the quintessence of philosophy. One cuts the Gordian knot if one can’t disentangle it. It is, therefore to follow the example of the Monsieur the philosopher of Florence that I say to my adverse party that the sun and the moon appear to us to be larger when rising or setting than at the zenith or toward midday because, although they’re really further away from us than they are in the former instances, we nevertheless think that they’re closer, and it’s that false belief that amplifies their volume in our eyes.

  AESOP: Monsieur Jouroufle, are you speaking on your own behalf or on behalf of your colleagues?

  JOUROUFLE: Of course I’m speaking on behalf of everyone.

  PEMBERTON: Shut up, Maroufle.19

  JOUROUFLE: Me, Maroufle! Pemberton, know that my name is Monsieur Jouroufle. Is it thus that you repay, with insults, my generosity and all the ardor that I’m putting into defending your hypotheses, which are perhaps not worth my trouble? If I had known... But...

  PEMBERTON: You’re annoyed? Calm down. Would you like to see yourself expelled from our learned body, which has made you shine until now like a luminous sun and will give you a passport in due form to traverse all of posterity with honor?

  JOUROUFLE: If that’s the case I’ll calm down, but I beg you, no more words that wound the self-respect of a man of genius like me, especially when he’s right. For after all, don’t you all explain that amplification of the heavenly bodies on rising and setting, as I do? If you give me the lie, I’ll cite the astronomy of Monsieur Lalande and the physics of Messieurs such and such, who will testify against you.

  PEMBERTON in a low voice: You’re right, but on occasion, it’s necessary to be able to keep quiet about explanations that might make sensible people laugh.

  PLUCHE: President, can science be glorified by the explanation that Monsieur Jouroufle has just given?

  AESOP: Indeed, who could ever believe that a distant object would appear larger because one imagines that it is closer? What is more implausible?

  JOUROUFLE: What, then is the cause of that apparent augmentation in the apparent size of heavenly bodies when they’re rising or setting, which they gradually lose in proportion to their distance from the horizon?

  PLUCHE: Monsieur Jouroufle, On the Search for the Truth in the Sciences informs you of the cause, and that cause cannot be an imaginary optical illusion, but is real. Now, we have in that regard veridical witnesses that testify in our favor.

  AESOP: What are these witnesses?

  PLUCHE: These glass bottles full of water we have brought, and which we summon our adverse party to interrogate—which will be easily done by placing a little ivory ball half way between the edge and the center, to represent the position of the observer of the Earth with regard to our atmosphere. Then we shall see whether the little ball does not appear larger than before, and finally, placed to the right or left to represent the horizon, and then looking obliquely through the bottle, whether its apparent size is not further augmented.

  AESOP: That’s sufficient. Monsieur Jouroufle, I instruct you to carry out these experiments.
/>   JOUROUFLE: It’s not to make me fall into a trap, at least?

  AESOP: No, my friend, it’s merely to furnish you with the means of knowing the truth. Try.

  JOUROUFLE, transported by joy: Indeed! The little ball, put into the water in the bottle and brought nearer to the edge on this side of the center really seems magnified, and its apparent dimensions increase further when it is moved to the right or the left; which does seem to prove that our convex and diaphanous atmosphere ought to have the same effect on bodies that are observed through it.

  AESOP: That’s evident.

  SGRAVESANDE: Perhaps to you, President, but not to us. And in any case, let our adverse party not sing victory yet; for if by chance the optical property of our atmospheric fluid seems to us to have made us run into a little snag, we have other hypotheses that ought certainly to make our cause triumph. I therefore request that On the Search for the Truth in the Sciences should make an authentic reparation to Newton for having sustained in the second part of its third book that the Earth has another shape than the one that the scientist has attributed to it.