Bernard de Fontenelle on Scientific Curiosity
| Autoři | |
|---|---|
| Rok publikování | 2025 |
| Druh | Další prezentace na konferencích |
| Fakulta / Pracoviště MU | |
| Citace | |
| Popis | My contribution concerns the notion of scientific curiosity in the texts of Bernard de Fontenelle. In the history of philosophy and theology, curiosity has been a label for inquiry that had the ambition to go beyond the limits set to human knowledge. Often curiosity meant the knowledge of things that God has not revealed to humans - or the knowledge of things that are useless to humanity. In the long run, early modern culture saw the rehabilitation of curiosity from a vice to a virtue. In my article, I want to focus on how Bernard de Fontenelle, secretary of the Royal Academy of Sciences, worked with the concept of curiosity. From 1699 on, Fontenelle published volumes of the Histoire de l'Académie royale des sciences, which summarized the work of the academics. I argue that in these volumes Fontenelle defended scientific curiosity as a free exploration that need not be justified by immediate utility. He was thus defending natural philosophy/science against positions that considered scientific knowledge of nature to be a vanity (Christian apologetics) and that demanded from scientists legitimazing their activities and their pensions with some sort of utility (state administration). Fontenelle insisted that utility always comes only as an effect of an unrestricted pursuit of understanding nature, which at first sight may appear to be merely an aimless curiosity. |
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