Essay Review: Darwin and Duhem: The Edge of Contingency: French Catholic Reaction to Scientific Changes from Darwin to Duhem

See, e.g., Paul H. W. , The second ralliement: The rapprochement between church and state in France in the twentieth century (Washington, D.C., 1967); The sorcerer's apprentice: The French scientists' image of German science 1840–1919 (Gainesville, 1972).

Neo-Thomism (or neo-Scholasticism) was the nineteenth century movement aiming at the revival of the philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas as the basis of Catholic teaching. Apart from the relevant articles in the New Catholic encyclopedia and the works given by Paul ( The second ralliement , 179ff.), the basic source is Gerald A. McCool's seminal Catholic theology in the nineteenth century: The search for a unitary method (New York, 1977). There is a hostile contemporary account in ch. x, 446–86 of Lecanuet E. , La vie de l'Église sous Léon XIII (Paris, 1930). The tradition of Duhem's neo-Thomism goes back at least to Antonio Favaro's “Galileo Galilei in una rassegna del pensiero italiano nel corso del secolo decimosesto”, Archivio di storia della scienza, ii (1921), 137–47, esp. pp. 137–9, and to P. Frank's “Introduction—Historical background”, to his Modern science and its philosophy (Cambridge, Mass., 1949). It is endorsed by Crombie A. C. in his Galilée devant les critiques de la postérité (Conferences du Palais de la Découverte, Série D, no. 45, Paris, 1957); by Wiener P. P. , “Pragmatism”, Dictionary of the history of ideas , iii, 551–70; by Nye Mary Jo in her “The moral freedom of man and the determinism of nature: The Catholic synthesis of science and history in the Revue des Questions scientifiques”, British journal for the history of science, ix (1976), 274–92.

Thus page references to the book under review. In addition, the following abbreviations will be used: Théorie: Duhem P. , La théorie physique: Son objet et sa structure (Paris, 1906); Système: Duhem P. , Le Système du Monde: Histoire des doctrines cosmologiques de Platon à Copernic (10 vols, Paris, 1913–58),

Actes de Pius X, iii (1908), 84–181. I cite from the Official Translation: Encyclical Letter (Pascendi Gregis) of our most Holy Lord Pius X by Divine Providence Pope on the Doctrines of the Modernists (London, 1907).

ibid., 6–7.

See D. M. Eastwood's classic The revival of Pascal: A study of his relation to modern French thought (Oxford, 1936).

See La Rédaction (pseud. for L. Laberthonnière), “Notre programme”, Annales de philosophie chrétienne (hereafter cited as Annales), cli (1905), 5–31, esp. p. 30.

See apart from Théorie, Duhem's Revue des questions scientifiques articles: “Quelques réflections au sujet des théories de physique”, xxxi (1892), 139–77; “Notation atomique et hypothèses atomistiques”, xxxi (1892), 391–454; “Une nouvelle théorie du monde inorganique”, xxxiii (1893), 90–133; “Physique et métaphysique”, xxxiv (1893), 55–83, “L'École anglaise et les théories physiques”, xxxiv (1893), 345–78; “Quelques réflexions sur la physique expérimentale”, xxxvi (1894), 179–229.

See his “Science et philosophie.” Revue de métaphysique et de morale, vii (1899), 375–425, 503–62, 708–31, and viii (1900), 37–72; “Un Positivisme nouveau”, ibid., ix (1901), 138–53; “Sur quelques objections adressées à la nouvelle philosophie”, ibid., ix (1901), 292–327, 407–32.

See, e.g., Science et hypothèse (Paris, 1902) which reprints earlier articles somewhat revised. Duhem , Théorie, pt. II, ch. iv, sect. 2, 244 claims priority over Poincaré for the essentials of his analysis of theory and experiment.

See, e.g., his Essai sur les conditions et les limites de la certitude logique (Paris, 1894) (thesis) and his Le rationnel: Études complémentaires à l'essai sur la certitude logique (Paris, 1898) which reprints various journal articles.

But see Nye Mary Jo , “The Boutroux circle and Poincaré's conventionalism”, Journal of the history of ideas, xl (1979), 107–20. Nye has nothing to say about Duhem's (in my opinion essential) role in her story.

The close relation between Le Roy and Teilhard is discussed in Vidler A. R. , A variety of Catholic Modernists (Cambridge, 1970), 93.

See, e.g., Blondel M. , Léon Ollé-Laprune: L'achèvement et l'avenir de son oeuvre (Paris, 1923).

See, e.g., Blondel M. , L'Action: Essai d'une critique de la vie et d'une science de la pratique (Paris, 1893) and his “Lettre sur les exigences de la pensée contemporaine en matière d'apologétique”, Annales (1896), reprinted in Les premiers écrits de Maurice Blondel…(Paris, 1956) and later works. See also ch. xi, 487–543 of Lecanuet E. , op. cit. (ref. 2).

Compte Rendu du Troisième Congrès…(Brussels, 1895). See vol. i, 313–15 and 322–5. Among the many commentaries on this incident, the most circumstantial and informative is that by Gardeil A. , Revue Thomiste (1894), 573–95 and 752–8.

See his daughter's biography: Hélène Pierre-Duhem, Un savant fran&çais…(Paris, 1936), 181–3.

Index librorum prohibitorum (1948).

SOZEIN TA PHAINOMENA: Essai sur la notion de théorie physique de Platon à Galilée (Paris, 1908); Annales (April-September, 1908), 113–39, 277–302. 352–77 482–514, 561–92.

Astonishingly not mentioned in any of the available biographies, I owe this to Dr Alec Vidler. Blondel entered the École Normale in 1881 and Duhem in 1882. A substantial correspondence survives (with Blondel's side in the Duhem papers now at the Académie des Sciences) including a letter from Blondel written during the crisis following the mise à l'Index of the Annales in 1913 in which Blondel longs “t'interviewer comme jadis chez la mère Callot et sous le sourire protecteur de Ferdinand le Tala.” Mme Callot was the infirmière at the École and “Tala” was and is a student argot for a practising Catholic. I thank Dr Donald G. Miller for supplying me with copies of correspondence. École Normale data may be checked in Le Centenaire de l'École Normale (Paris, 1895).

“Note de La Rédaction”, Annales, cl (1905), 301, and Laberthonnière Annales L. , “L'Abbé Charles Denis”, ibid., 302–5. Denis died in the late spring but Blondel and Laberthonnière held their hands till October before setting out their aims.

See my “The genesis of a mediaeval historian”, Annals of science, xxxiii (1976), 119–29.

Lacanuet E. , op. cit. (ref. 2), 478–9. It is widely known that Laberthonnière wrote anonymously ch. ix, x & xi, 384–543 of this book though officially condemned to silence. See Louis Canet's note in L. Laberthonnière, Esquisse d'une philosophie personnaliste (Paris, 1942).

Wehrlé Maurice Blondel-Joannès , Correspondance: Extraits (Paris, 1969), 531.

A view visible as late as 1962 in Knowles D. , The evolution of mediaeval thought (Longman, 1962) as well as the article, possibly by him, “Scholasticism”, The Oxford dictionary of the Christian church, 2nd ed., ed. by Cross F. L. and Livingstone E. A. (Oxford, 1974), 1245–7.

See Études sur Léonard de Vinci: Ceux qu'il a lus et ceux qui l'ont lus, seconde série (Paris, 1909).

Système, vi (1956), ch. i, 66–69.

Système, v (1917), 569–70.

Op. cit. (ref. 17), 165.

Système, vii (1957), 3. It is unfortunate that this clear statement became available to scholars only in the late 1950s.

He cites the edition of Ernest Havet (Paris, 1852) throughout his life, ignoring newer and better editions produced by, e.g., his correspondent Léon Brunschvicg, and occasionally fails to mark his elisions towards the end of his life.

See, e.g., his preface to Albert Maire's bibliography L'Oeuvre scientifique de Blaise Pascal… (Paris, 1912) reprinted in the appropriate volume of Maire's later 5-volume Bibliographie générale…(Paris, 1925–27).

Fragment no. 423 in editions deriving from that of Louis Lafuma (3 vols, Paris, 1951) and translated by Krailsheimer A.J. (Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1966) and John Warrington (Everyman, London, 1973).

Système, vi (1954), 591.

He was after all associated with the Jansenists whose position was based on the Augustinus (1640) of Cornelius Jansenius, the book all the fuss was about.

The vast literature on Modernism includes, inter alia, Poulat's E. Histoire, dogme et critique dans la crise moderniste (Tournai, Paris, 1962), and Vidler's A. R. op. cit. (ref. 13).

Actes de Pius X, v (1927), 141–86, esp. 163–8.

Op. cit. (ref. 4), 18.

ibid., 53.

ibid., 57.

See, e.g., the article “Doctors, scholastic”, in The Oxford dictionary of the Christian church (ref. 25). 413–14.