The Nickel Man Read online

  HEROMONDAS: Follow us and we’ll tell you.

  JOUROUFLE: Don’t you know that Seigneur Aesop will soon be back to judge from the height of his tribunal?

  HEROMONDAS: There’s no need to wait; decamp.

  JOUROUFLE: Just now I wanted to run away and you didn’t; now I want to stay and you’re ordering me to decamp?

  HEROMONDAS: Believe me, follow my example.

  JOUROUFLE: I can see what you’re up to. You want me to quit my post, so that Monsieur de Sgravesande has a sufficient reason to take away the keys to my academy, or my position as the first geometer in Urania’s court. Not so stupid! I’m here, and I’m staying.

  HEROMONDAS: Would you like me to tell you the truth, frankly? It’s because it’s a matter of the movement of the Earth in the ecliptic; we can’t say anything without Copernicus. So, if you want to sustain the combat against our adversaries alone, you’ll be defeated; our party is in peril.

  JOUROUFLE: Well, like the illustrious Seigneur Cato, I’ll bury myself under its ruins, and I’ll have a beautiful epitaph set over my tomb that will let the remotest posterity know that I died defending the Newtonian system, true or false, good or bad.

  HEROMONDAS: That’s your famous genius condemned to the night of the tomb, then. Adieu.

  JOUROUFLE: But you’re going very quickly. A word in your ear, at least.

  HEROMONDAS: What do you want?

  JOURNOUFLE: When Seigneur Aesop sits on his tribunal, how shall I speak? What shall I put forward? What has still to come up in the trial? What accusations is it necessary to bring against On the Search for the Truth in the Sciences? What do I say? What do I do? What do I reply?

  HEROMONDAS: You don’t know?

  JOUROUFLE: No.

  HEROMONDAS: Well, guess, if you can. Here’s Pluche and Bernardin de Saint-Pierre coming back, laden with various instruments of physics, and Aesop’s coming out of Urania’s palace. I don’t want to wait for them. Adieu.

  Scene Sixteen

  Aesop, Pluche, Bernardin de Saint-Pierre,

  Jouroufle, etc.

  AESOP: Urania wanted to know the judgment I had rendered on the subject of the optical property of our atmosphere, and the shape of the Earth, and she has deigned to confirm them. I would have liked her to discharge me from the difficult employment that she has confided to me temporarily, for there’s nothing most annoying that being obliged to condemn as erroneous the opinions of illustrious scientists for whom one has infinite esteem, but instead of granting my request she has ordered me to remount the tribunal in order to regulate the complaints of the two parties. I’m now ready to listen to both. Accusers of the text of On the Search for Truth in the Sciences, appear.

  JOUROUFLE: Here we are.

  AESOP: Where are your colleagues?

  JOUROUFLE: I don’t know.

  AESOP: Shouldn’t they have waited for me?

  JOUROUFLE: Well, if they’re doing as the knights of the great Pompey did on the plans of Pharsalia, how could they have waited for you?

  PLUCHE: Why hasn’t Monsieur Jouroufle done the same?

  JOUROUFLE: And who would defend the great Newton?

  BERNARDIN DE SAINT-PIERRE: The great Newton must certainly be glorious, to have such support!

  AESOP: Will you continue to be the accuser, Monsieur Jouroufle?

  JOUROUFLE: I’d like to, but I can’t.

  AESOP: What’s stopping you?

  JOUROUFLE: It’s that I’m not a sorcerer; I’m only a disciple of the sublime science, or, in a word, a geometer.

  AESOP: I don’t understand what you’re saying. Explain this enigma to us.

  JOUROUFLE: It’s that Monsieur Heromondas, while going away, didn’t want to tell me what it was necessary to say. “Guess, if you can,” he shouted to me. That’s easier said than done, for everyone knows that when it’s a matter of discovering the hidden truth or secrets regarding science, a geometer isn’t a sorcerer.

  AESOP: So you have nothing to say against the text of On the Search for the Truth in the Sciences?

  JOUROUFLE: No, unfortunately.

  PLUCHE: Since Monsieur Jouroufle is reduced to silence, I’ll change role, and instead of simply being the defender of On the Search for the Truth in the Sciences, I’ll become the accuser of Newton, whom I’ve never regarded as a good physicist, but as a skillful calculator. That scientist has advanced that a void exists in the spaces of the universe, and that the Earth and the planets move through that void. As that assertion is false, being contrary to phenomena, I request its condemnation.

  AESOP: And what witness will testify to the falseness of that assertion?

  PLUCHE: The terrestrial atmosphere, which would cease to surround the Earth if the void were real, because that atmosphere, being elastic, like a spring, would quickly escape if nothing retained it around the Earth.

  AESOP: What proof can you give of that elasticity?

  PLUCHE: That the air forming the atmosphere, when compressed, exerts and effort to set itself free, and that a bladder full of the fluid and put in the receptacle of a pneumatic machine dilates and bursts promptly when a void is created—which is to say, when the air contained in the receptacle, and serves to coerce that contained in the bladder, is pumped out. Thus, if beyond our atmosphere there were no matter opposed to its dilatation, is would disappear in the same way in very little time.

  AESOP: Monsieur Jouroufle, have you anything to allege against these experiments?

  JOUROUFLE: No, unfortunately.

  AESOP: Then it’s evident that the Newtonian void doesn’t exist, for otherwise, we’d have no atmosphere.

  JOUROUFLE: Oh, just a moment, Seigneur Aesop! We agree that the terrestrial atmosphere would be scattered in the void if its elasticity were the same everywhere, but to get us out of difficulty we sustain with the famous geometers that since the atmosphere doesn’t dissipate, it must be the case that the upper layers are less elastic than the lower ones.25

  AESOP: That’s very bad reasoning, Monsieur Jouroufle. Do you see that machine in the hands of Bernardin de Saint-Pierre? It’s a long steel strip coiled like a watch-spring, which is fastened with a screw. If, wanting to argue that the steel composing the strip were not elastic, I brought forward as proof the fact that it isn’t unwinding, you wouldn’t fail to protest against the falsity of the proposition. It’s the same with the argument that you’ve just made. It would be better boldly to claim that the upper air belongs to a different species ha the lower air.

  JOUROUFLE: I’d like to sustain that assertion, but I can’t, because, by a fatal mischance, the physicists who have analyzed air collected at very great heights during aerostatic voyages have recognized that it does not differ in any way from that existing at the terrestrial surface.

  BERNARDIN DE SAINT-PIERRE: It is, therefore, indubitable that the air in the upper regions is the same species as that in the lower regions, and must also be elastic. But tell us, Monsieur Jouroufle, are all the sidereal atmospheres in the middle of our void like the one you attribute to the Earth, elastic lower down and inelastic on high, and do they remain coerced around their planets?

  JOUROUFLE: Oh no! If that of the moon, for example, had not been elastic everywhere, it would not have evaporated by virtue of the effect of its elasticity.26

  AESOP: What leads you to believe that the lunar atmosphere has evaporated?

  JOUROUFLE: The fact that we cannot perceive it, either with the naked eye or with our telescopes.

  PLUCHE: However, it shows itself in a very sensible or evident manner in annular eclipses of the sun.

  JOUROUFLE: That costs nothing to say when one has learned it from On the Search for the Truth in the Sciences, but we, to whom no one has confided it, could not divine it.

  AESOP: Into what part of space would your lunar atmosphere have gone, then?

  JOUROUFLE: Toward the Earth, which would have aspired it, and it would have stayed there, so it’s claimed.

  AESOP: And has it conserved the same elasticity t
hat it had on the moon?

  JOUROUFLE: Perhaps, but no one knows.

  AESOP: It seems to me that if the fluid lunar atmosphere was highly elastic around the moon, it ought to be the same in the vicinity of the Earth, and in consequence, if it was not retained about the first sphere, it would not have become fixed around the latter, because a change of location cannot change the elasticity of a spring.

  JOUROUFLE: That seems evident, I admit. However, you might think otherwise, Seigneur Aesop, if you could reason in a slightly different manner. For example, our atmosphere exists, and it is elastic; therefore, either it ought to dissipate completely or to be retained by some matter capable of opposing its elasticity; nothing seems more consequent; but then, adieu the void, since the atmosphere doesn’t dissipate. However, our Newtonian astronomical system obliges us to sustain that the celestial spaces are void, or almost void. What can we do, then? We say that our atmosphere near the surface is highly elastic, since it tends to dilate there, but we also claim that since it hasn’t vanished, it must be that it exists toward its confines in a state of rarity in which the fluid atmosphere has no elasticity.27 On the other hand, we don’t perceive the atmosphere of the moon, although it ought to have an abundant one according to our calculations, so we contend that the lunar atmosphere, being elastic everywhere, has dissipated by the effect of that elasticity. Thus we encounter no difficulty that we cannot resolve to our satisfaction. And that, Seigneur Aesop, is what it is to have a geometric mind.”

  AESOP: But there are real contradictions in that.

  JOUROUFLE: Yes, but without contradictions, how could we fill our books and have our science admired? In any case, who is capable of perceiving a contradiction in a book of astronomy or physics, when it’s seasoned with a little calculation?

  AESOP: Although your logic is astonishing, Monsieur Jouroufle, it won’t prevent the condemnation of the hypothesis of the void.

  JOUROUFLE: Before condemning the hypothesis of the void, pay attention, Seigneur Aesop, to the fact that we desire absolutely that the universe be a pure mechanism, which, once set in motion by some cause, continues to move without intervention or any outside assistance. If, beyond out atmosphere, we admit matter, which, although fluid, could coerce that atmosphere, that matter would oppose the displacement of the celestial spheres, whose movement would soon be annihilated by the effect of that resistance; nothing is more certain. In consequence, the entire universe, according to us, would fall into a complete torpor, and we would no longer be able to work our way back by means of the combined mechanisms of impulsion and attraction, which we have imagined, the force of which would no longer be as powerful. Now, to affirm, as we do, that the entire universe is similar to a machine, composed of cogs and levers, which, being dependent on one another, move mechanically without the aid of the divinity, it is necessary not to exclude the void, or, if one wants to admit into space a few vapors or rays of light, they are so nimble and so rare that they not only cannot compress our exceedingly dilatable fluid atmosphere but cannot oppose any sensible resistance to the heavenly bodies circulating in that space. That, Monseigneur Aesop, is what one might call the express doctrine of our incomparable Newton.28

  AESOP: Your reasoning, Monsieur Jouroufle, is as false as it is absurd. What! You want to sustain an erroneous hypothesis by defending an opinion that is more erroneous still? Which is to say, to contend that total void exists in the celestial spaces, or if there is some matter there, it is incapable of compressing out exceedingly elastic atmosphere? And why? Because it pleases you to call the world a pure mechanism, which goes by itself without the workman who formed it presiding over its movements. It seems to me that this is a case of building considerations on considerations to more important verities, astronomy furnishing you with the means. You could have said: Our atmosphere is elastic and ends to expand; thus, it would escape if nothing were coercing it; thus outside that atmosphere there is a matter that compresses it, although transparent and fluid. But if that matter has enough force and density to produce that effect, it would oppose resistance to the spheres that traverse it, and the friction that would result would soon annihilate the movement of those spheres. Thus, if the latter have continued their course through space for many centuries without being disturbed in the orbit that they describe, there must indubitably be a sovereign Master who presides over their movements. A mechanism needs to be reset regularly, and the divinity operates here like the hand of the workman; but he does not operate mechanically, like the latter. His permanent will gives life and movement to the universe at every instant of every hour, and it obliges the stars to cleave the ethereal fluid in which they float, without their rapid course being slowed, even though that ether has sufficient force to restrain their expansible atmospheres.

  JOUROUFLE: Do you believe Seigneur Aesop, that if we reasoned like that, we could have as many partisans in the recent centuries, who have been enthusiastic about our systems and have heaped eulogies upon us?

  AESOP: Ill-merited eulogies at the expense of being honorable only cover us with shame, and I cannot be sufficiently astonished that astronomy, which ought to bring men closer to the divinity, has, on the contrary, distanced them in recent times.

  PLUCHE: It is for want of knowing how our atmosphere was formed that Newton and his partisans have imagined that pretended void. On the Search for the Truth in the Sciences gives us a true idea of the formation of that same atmosphere, and it is astonishing that such an idea has escaped, all the illustrious scientists there have been until now, although it ought to have occurred to the minds of all of them, however little attention they have paid to the most ancient and most veridical of historians. In fact, at the commencement of Genesis, Moses announces that God first created heaven and earth. The heaven of which he is speaking there is nothing other than the elastic and transparent fluid in which the sidereal bodies were to circulate, and which can be given the name of ether. God did not want to create the world in a single spurt, but piece by piece, in order that it could not be thought that creation as the work of blind chance. That heaven, named the first, sprang from nothing before the earth and occupied all of the space that was destined for it. The earth, appearing thereafter, expelled the ether from the place that it was to occupy, compressing it, and by virtue of that pressure, obliged it to tighten around it. By that means, its atmosphere was formed, which is of the same species as the etheric fluid, and which terminates where the pressure ceases to be felt. One sees, therefore, that he part of that atmosphere closest to the terrestrial surface has to be the most pressurized, since it experienced, initially, the full effort of the expulsion, and that its density originates uniquely from the pressure exerted by the mass of our globe during its deployment, and not the gravity of the superior layers, as is everywhere alleged. If the Newtonian void had existed, the matter thus expelled would have been disseminated, and we would not have had an atmosphere. In order for the contrary to occur, it follows necessarily that the space in which our world was placed was completely filled with that elastic substance.

  AESOP: That’s enough, and without longer discussion, it is easy to understand that the existence of the terrestrial atmosphere is incompatible with the Newtonian void. What more do you want, defenders of On the Search for the Truth in the Sciences?

  BERNARDIN DE SAINT-PIERRE: The condemnation of Newtonian attraction. Without thinking for a moment about what our atmospheric fluid might operate, Newton, having seen a fruit detach itself from a tree and fall to the ground, thought that the Earth had drawn the fruit by means of its attraction, and soon imagined that the attraction in question could be exerted over great distances. He concluded, with the German Kepler, that it extended as far as the moon, the sun, and even beyond the most remote planets; and that was the origin of his false theory of sidereal gravitation, or universal gravity, too lightly adopted by our academicians.

  AESOP: What proof to you give of the falsity if that theory?

  BERNARDIN DE SAINT-PIERRE: Inc
ontestable experiments, which prove that attraction only exists because of atmospheres.

  AESOP: What have you to respond, Monsieur Jouroufle?

  JOUROUFLE: That if the weight of bodies is almost as sensible at the summit of mountains as in the plain, it might well extend all the way to the moon, as well as to all the heavenly bodies, and reciprocally, as the great geometers inform us.

  PLUCHE: You did not reason in the same way just now, Monsieur Jouroufle, on the subject of the elasticity of our atmosphere, with regard to which you could have said, with more reason than here, that since that atmosphere is very elastic in the inferior regions, it ought to be in the same in the most elevated ones.

  JOUROUFLE: That’s because then, I needed the atmosphere not to be elastic everywhere, whereas now I need attraction to be felt everywhere.

  AESOP: Your logic is truly admirable, Monsieur Jouroufle!

  JOUROUFLE: Certainly! Is it not that of the most illustrious Newtonians?