le Bovier de Fontenelle, Bernard
Entretiens sur la pluralit� des mondes. Amsterdam: Pierre Mortier, [c.1694]. 12mo, full early calf; folding frontis, floriated initials. Nouvelle Edition.
Written at a time when the very concept of a "world" was changing from the Aristotelian "Earth synonymous with World" to an idea of "Earth as but one world", this book caught the imagination through its daring discussion of concepts we take as commonplace argument - other worlds, space travel, extraterrestrial life.

Considered one of the first major works of the Enlightenment, its popularity may rest on being written in French instead of Latin - making it more accessible to the lay reader - and for its effort to use popular language to explain scientific thought. At a time when Newton was writing the magisterial Principia (in Latin of course) Fontenelle offered a charming witty philosopher chatting with a Marquise during a moonlit stroll in her garden. These ideas were not simply for the dry halls of academia, not simply for the educated, they were a fitting topic for the drawing rooms of the cultured.

Even here though, Fontanelle pushes further than most. Not content with creating the genre of popular science writing; Fontanelle argues a proto-feminist agenda. In his preface he specifically addresses female readers, writing that the explanation he offers should be easily understood even without scientific training. For all the trappings of period chauvinism (asking women to devote as much concentration as to a romance), it states that women not only could understand natural philosophy, they should. That Aphra Benn wrote the most famous English translation shows the importance of this work in the history of female education.

Fontenelle remained clear about the controversial potential. In a delightful anticipation of opposition, he points out that when he says the moon is inhabited, his critic imagines men made like us. Since the descendants of Adam have not reached the moon, those on the moon could not be sons of Adam - highly embarrassing to religion. However, Fontenelle explains (in English translation), this problem "turns therefore wholly upon the men in the moon, but it is those who make those objections that put men in the moon; for my part, I have not placed any there. I have mentioned inhabitants in the moon, but there are not said to be men like us. I have not seen them,, nor have I spoke of them as if I had seen them..." This playful but serious tone characterises the best of his work, and typifies the best of popular science's ability to explicate the complicated.

Fontanelle does not shrink from the implications of his work. In a passage that prefigures the Total Perspective Vortex the marquise worries "But I see the universe is so large, says she, that I know not where I am, or what will become of me...Is that vast space which comprehends our sun and planets, but an inconsiderable part of the universe? Are there as many such spaces as there are fixed stars? I protest it is dreadful, the idea confounds and overwhelms me." Fontanelle does not agree.