CONVERSATIONS ON THE PLURALITY OF WORLDS (1686) – Written by Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle. The author offered up some science fiction concepts that were considered real possibilities in 1686. These ideas were presented within the frame of conversations, as indicated in the full title. The conversations happened over the course of six evenings.
FIRST EVENING – Bernard presented these conversations as taking place during flirtatious evening walks with a fictional Marchioness based on his real-life female acquaintance Madame de la Mesangire of Rouen. Due to the time period, she had not been educated in the sciences and Fontenelle needed to introduce her to certain concepts from the ground up.
This first evening found him explaining what 1686 science knew about the rotation of the Earth and the Earth’s revolution around the Sun. An interesting, outdated element of the conversation came in when Bernard discussed what some scholars of the time apparently believed – that space was not a vacuum but was made up of “celestial fluid” in which the Earth and certain other bodies moved. Continue reading
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