The measure of the sky: Correspondence of Chapelain and Huygens
Seventeenth-century cosmological texts were in many ways vast textual laboratories for the establishment of scientific credibility. The problem is how to validate theories whose objects one can neither see nor reach? How, in other words, to measure what seems by its nature to be incommensurable? Thi...
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| Format: | Journal article |
| Language: | French |
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2009
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| _version_ | 1826279264417218560 |
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| author | Aït-Touati, F |
| author_facet | Aït-Touati, F |
| author_sort | Aït-Touati, F |
| collection | OXFORD |
| description | Seventeenth-century cosmological texts were in many ways vast textual laboratories for the establishment of scientific credibility. The problem is how to validate theories whose objects one can neither see nor reach? How, in other words, to measure what seems by its nature to be incommensurable? This article is devoted to a detailed account of the development of Christiaan Huygens' dual career as courtier and scientist, specifically through a reading of his correspondence with the writer Jean Chapelain, in order to make sense of the discrepancy between the theoretical incommensurability of his astronomical problems and the need for making these commensurate with the rhetorical and poetic strategies then available. The article explores the function of epistolary relations in court philosophical circles of the period using the Chapelain-Huygens letters as case, as well as the strategies - social, worldly, rhetorical, or poetic - that Christiaan Huygens developed during the debate over Saturn's ring in 1658, which took place the year before the publishing of Huygens's Systema Saturnium and during which Chapelain played a crucial role as adviser and protector of the young astronomer. The correspondence shows an analogous relationship between the concepts of harmony and vraisemblance, or verisimilitude, in the unlikely fields of astronomy on the one hand and of poetics on the other. The singularity of Saturn's ring led Huygens to a changed use of the Aristotelian concept of verisimilitude, where it becomes not only an evaluative tool for measuring the poetic and known world, but a new way to think about the incommensurability of a singular and previously unknown astronomical object. |
| first_indexed | 2024-03-06T23:56:08Z |
| format | Journal article |
| id | oxford-uuid:7449a3be-5cf7-46fc-b936-8e9e7e9a6941 |
| institution | University of Oxford |
| language | French |
| last_indexed | 2024-03-06T23:56:08Z |
| publishDate | 2009 |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | oxford-uuid:7449a3be-5cf7-46fc-b936-8e9e7e9a69412022-03-26T20:01:45ZThe measure of the sky: Correspondence of Chapelain and HuygensJournal articlehttp://purl.org/coar/resource_type/c_dcae04bcuuid:7449a3be-5cf7-46fc-b936-8e9e7e9a6941FrenchSymplectic Elements at Oxford2009Aït-Touati, FSeventeenth-century cosmological texts were in many ways vast textual laboratories for the establishment of scientific credibility. The problem is how to validate theories whose objects one can neither see nor reach? How, in other words, to measure what seems by its nature to be incommensurable? This article is devoted to a detailed account of the development of Christiaan Huygens' dual career as courtier and scientist, specifically through a reading of his correspondence with the writer Jean Chapelain, in order to make sense of the discrepancy between the theoretical incommensurability of his astronomical problems and the need for making these commensurate with the rhetorical and poetic strategies then available. The article explores the function of epistolary relations in court philosophical circles of the period using the Chapelain-Huygens letters as case, as well as the strategies - social, worldly, rhetorical, or poetic - that Christiaan Huygens developed during the debate over Saturn's ring in 1658, which took place the year before the publishing of Huygens's Systema Saturnium and during which Chapelain played a crucial role as adviser and protector of the young astronomer. The correspondence shows an analogous relationship between the concepts of harmony and vraisemblance, or verisimilitude, in the unlikely fields of astronomy on the one hand and of poetics on the other. The singularity of Saturn's ring led Huygens to a changed use of the Aristotelian concept of verisimilitude, where it becomes not only an evaluative tool for measuring the poetic and known world, but a new way to think about the incommensurability of a singular and previously unknown astronomical object. |
| spellingShingle | Aït-Touati, F The measure of the sky: Correspondence of Chapelain and Huygens |
| title | The measure of the sky: Correspondence of Chapelain and Huygens |
| title_full | The measure of the sky: Correspondence of Chapelain and Huygens |
| title_fullStr | The measure of the sky: Correspondence of Chapelain and Huygens |
| title_full_unstemmed | The measure of the sky: Correspondence of Chapelain and Huygens |
| title_short | The measure of the sky: Correspondence of Chapelain and Huygens |
| title_sort | measure of the sky correspondence of chapelain and huygens |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT aittouatif themeasureoftheskycorrespondenceofchapelainandhuygens AT aittouatif measureoftheskycorrespondenceofchapelainandhuygens |