The Nickel Man

by Brian Stableford

  BERNARDIN DE SAINT-PIERRE: For the argument that Monsieur Jouroufle takes from mountains to be valid, it’s necessary for him to prove either that mountains are not in the terrestrial atmosphere or that the phenomenon of gravity would also be observed there even if they were outside the atmosphere.

  JOUROUFLE: One can’t think of everything.

  PLUCHE: It’s easy to see that neither Newton nor Monsieur Jouroufle, who follows his doctrine, has ever thought about all the experiments of which On the Search for the Truth in the Sciences makes mention, which can be made with small, very thin objects floating on limped water, which attract one another or repel one another according to the diversity of their atmospheres, but fall into inertia when that same atmosphere is removed.

  AESOP: Monsieur Jouroufle, would you like to know about these experiments cited by Pluche, in order to be able to combat them?

  JOUROUFLE: No, experiments made in water make me feel ill.

  AESOP: They would, however, have helped you to discover the truth with regard to the optical property of our atmosphere.

  JOUROUFLE: I’m very sorry about that.

  AESOP: Although you refuse to acquaint yourself with these experiments, they nevertheless allow the argument of the falsity of your system of universal gravitation. In fact, by reading them without prejudice in On the Search for the Truth in the Sciences, one is convinced that all the phenomena of gravity that are observed on earth are only due to the attractive property of our atmospheric fluid; since, in causing thin disks of silver, copper or tinplate to float in a dish filled with limpid water, one can represent on a small scale the aforesaid phenomena.

  JOUROUFLE: It might be, Seigneur Aesop, that you’re right but that we aren’t wrong, and this is why. The experiments you mention might well prove that attraction only takes place via the intermediary of atmospheres, but they’re carried out in water, and we’re n air, so, for that reason, I reject that testimony.

  PLUCHE: Well, we have others that are based not in water but in our atmosphere.

  AESOP: What are they?

  PLUCHE: Here they are.

  JOUROUFLE: Fine witnesses that you’re presenting there. What, bodies that can be electrified or magnetized? What can they say?

  AESOP: Monsieur Jouroufle, interrogate them, if you please?

  JOUROUFLE: In what manner?

  PLUCHE: See, then, whether this steel rod attracts those iron filings or these needles?

  JOUROUFLE: No, it doesn’t attract them.

  PLUCHE: Now I’ll magnetize the rod. (A pause.) It’s magnetized, Monsieur Jouroufle; let’s repeat the experiment.

  JOUROUFLE: Indeed! The rod now attracts the needles and the iron filings.

  PLUCHE: Now see this glass tube that I’ve just rubbed. It attracts, as you can see, the little particles of matter that one presents to it. But now that I’ve de-electrified it, see whether it still attracts.

  JOUROUFLE: No, it doesn’t.

  PLUCHE: Is it, then, the iron or the glass that draws small neighboring bodies toward it, or a matter that one accumulates around the former and which forms their true atmosphere?

  JOUROUFLE: Those experiments do prove that one body only attracts another by virtue of some fluid matter that is united with it in imitation of an atmosphere, but that atmosphere isn’t ours, and as long as that one doesn’t speak, I shall be incredulous.

  PLUCHE: Is the voice of the experiments you’ve just made no eloquent enough?

  JOUROUFLE: Not so far as I’m concerned. But tell me about the great and beautiful experiments that one can make in our atmosphere. Yes, those are experiments! And you’ll see whether they don’t certify, as our astronomers tenaciously affirm, that the law of universal gravitation extends over infinite distances, and will be eternal, according to our orders—do you hear?”

  AESOP: What are these experiments?

  JOUROUFLE: Here they are. Seigneur Bouguer, having gone to Peru to make the earth say whether it is flattened at the poles, which you can believe today if you wish, solemnly interrogated his clock. Having designated as unity, divided into millionths, the length of the pendulum at sea level, he noted that it vibrated sixty times in a minute. Having then taken that clock to a height of 8,786 feet and then to 14,604 feet, as our Newtonians say, his pendulum no longer made the same number of vibrations in the same interval of time, because the air of the atmosphere, being less condensed than the air at sea level, pressed less upon the earth, which announced that the force of weight had diminished in intensity and weakened. It was necessary, therefore, to have the same number of vibrations, to shorten the pendulum by 751 millionths at the first station and 1184 millionths at the second, Now, the distance traveled between these two points is very small, and yet the diminution in weight was quite sensible. Thus, we have all made this profound reasoning, with Seigneur Bouguer: If the differences found in the length of the pendulum are already very sensible at such a small distance, the force of weight probably extends as indefinitely in space; and from that we have drawn the consequence that the force must extend as far as the moon and even beyond the planets.

  AESOP: Monsieur Jouroufle, permit me to tell you that that consequence and that reasoning are most absurd, and depose against you; for if they were true, it would be necessary for the shortening of the pendulum to be hardly sensible and for the distances traveled to be very considerable. But according to you, it is entirely to the contrary, and if one compares the reduced quantities of the pendulum and the distances traveled, one will find that the force of weight, instead of extending to infinite distances, must cease less than five hundred leagues above the terrestrial surface, as On the Search for the Truth in the Sciences demonstrates.

  JOUROUFLE: Oh, Monsieur Aesop, if my reasoning doesn’t please you, I’ll gladly abandon it, because this time my sentiment accords with yours. In fact, our dear Newtonians, who have doubtless adopted the hypotheses of Newton confidently without scrutinizing them at length and attentively, and even without confronting them obstinately with the phenomena, observations and experiments that they have made themselves, have perhaps wanted to make fun of me in obliging me to believe that the attraction of brute and inert matter can be felt in all directions at a distance of thousands of millions of leagues and in an indivisible instant, without any disorder resulting from that pulling in all directions. That, I confess now, is a great absurdity—that being said, nevertheless, in my opinion, without any consequence being taken from it. But it’s impossible that the sun can exercise such a powerful attractive action on the highest planets; however, sidereal attraction must nevertheless exist toward some point, according to my common sense.

  AESOP: Where, then?

  JOUROUFLE: Toward the earth, where, it appears to me, the proof is striking for all to see, and is renewed twice a day.

  AESOP: And what is that proof?

  JOUROUFLE: The tidal flux and reflux of the sea. Oh, on that score, Seigneur Aesop, I’ve caught you in my nets, and I’ll force you to admit that luni-solar attraction cannot have any more convincing proof in its favor, as the Newtonian Lalande, a savant astronomer, assures us conscientiously. Now, this is the superb mechanism that the incomparable Newton found in his brain. According to him, the moon, being closer to our globe than the sun, its energy ought to be three or four times more considerable that that of the latter star, and in consequence, act more considerably to raise the earth and its seas twice a day. The moon, therefore, in passing over our hemisphere, attracts the waters of our oceans, but a little less than the earth and even less than the waters in the other hemisphere. The latter remain behindhand, thus appearing to rise at the same time as our Atlantic Ocean, and hence the flux that, by lowering the waters, is soon followed by the reflux, either for our zenith or for our nadir. Now, these effects, which are renewed, but alternately, when, by virtue of the rotation of the earth, the moon appears in the opposite hemisphere, thus procure us very nearly every day two high tides and two low tides, as the excellent Newton assures us.r />
  AESOP: And do the phenomena of the flux and reflux arrive every day in all the seas at the same time?

  JOUROUFLE: Not exactly, for, according to exact observations, the phenomena only take place once a day in a large area of the Pacific Ocean, and even the waters of that sea in the Bay of Panama only begin to rise when the Atlantic tide has ceased to rise and is ebbing.

  AESOP: But doesn’t the moon pass over the zenith and nadir of those seas every day?

  JOUROUFLE: Certainly.

  AESOP: Then why are there places where only one tide is observed in 24 hours, when, according to your hypothesis, there ought to be two? Isn’t your proof in default there, especially if the tide in the Bay of Panama is also taken into consideration?

  JOUROUFLE: Oh, if you still doubt the power that the moon exerts on the seas, ask the compilers of yearbooks and almanacs, and you’ll see whether or not they’ll certify for you that the movements of the moon are coordinated in any year with the production of considerable tides. Those Messieurs are so certain that, in certain cases, they warn maritime authorities to take the precautions necessary for protection against unusual tides.

  AESOP: And do they arrive as announced?

  JOUROUFLE: What does it matter? Isn’t it sufficient that they predict them?

  AESOP: No; it’s necessary that the event justifies the prediction.

  JOUROUFLE: One ought not to be so difficult in regard to theories; it’s necessary to grant something to hypothesis, to let a few suppositions pass; otherwise, one would only ever be regaled by old wives’ tales.

  AESOP: Could we not have some of these newspapers in which our Newtonians announce these extraordinary tides?

  BERNARDIN DE SAINT-PIERRE: Purely by chance, I’ve kept those of the year 1817, when extraordinary tides were announced for the third of April, the eleventh of October and the ninth of November.

  AESOP: Did the predicted high tides arrive on the designated days?

  BERNARDIN DE SANT-PIERRE: No, President. On the third of April there was supposed to be a very high tide because of the lunar perigee, but everything passed normally, whereas on the sixth of March, of which no mention had been made, the tide was so strong that it broke the dykes in several places and caused a thousand ravages.

  AESOP: And was there no indication of the cause that made the sea rise up in such an unusual manner?

  BERNARDIN DE SAINT-PIERRE : Pardon me. It was the storms and impetuous winds that reigned on the sixth of March. On the eleventh of October and the ninth of November, it was as on the third of April. The weather being calm on those says, the sea was not rough and the tide did not frighten the inhabitants of our coastal regions, as it had done so terribly on the sixth of March.

  AESOP: What do you say, Monsieur Jouroufle, to these high tides that arrive when they are not expected, and which, in spite of the lunar perigee, fail to arrive on the days indicated?

  JOUROUFLE: I say that it’s a feminine caprice, for Amphitrite doubtless takes offense at the fact that our geometer-astronomers are casting a curious eye on what she ought to do or not do, and in order to avenge herself she does the opposite—but at other times she is less perverse.

  AESOP: Well, when Amphitrite, for your honor and that of Newton, wishes to render herself docile to the predictions of our Newtonian astronomers, you will be right—always provided that in the epochs designed for extraordinary tides they are not excited by furious winds.

  JOUROUFLE: If the sun and, above all, the moon, don’t cause the tides, what is the cause of such an astonishing phenomenon.

  BERNARDIN DE SAINT-PIERRE: The sun, not by its pretended attraction but by its chemical and physical action on the elastic vapors raised in the atmosphere—which would take too long to explain here but can be seen in detail in On the Search for the Truth in the Sciences, in the chapter on “Tides.”

  The same work, President, also identifies as erroneous several other hypotheses that Newton has either adopted or introduced into physics and astronomy, such as those regarding light, properly speaking, its refraction, reflection and refrangibility; the colors of bodies and those produced by the prism, eclipses, etc., etc. As we can’t list them without appearing tedious, we’ll content ourselves for the moment with provoking the condemnation of the one that relates to the pretended movement of the earth, proposed by Copernicus, and which the English scientist Newton has sustained as one of the principal bases of his false theory of universal gravitation, and which its partisans are also obliged to adopt, because they frankly admit that gravitation cannot exist without that displacement of the terrestrial globe.

  AESOP: And what phenomena can you cite in support of your accusation?

  BERNARDIN DE SAINT-PIERRE: Among several astronomical phenomena that testify against the hypothesis of the displacement of the earth, as one can see in On the Search for the Truth in the Sciences, which we cite for the sake of brevity, is that of the fixity of the pole star in all the seasons of the year, while the earth, in rotating on its axis, changes its position every day by approximately two degrees. Now, if the daily displacement of the terrestrial meridian, which only describes a circle nearly three thousand leagues in diameter produces such a change in the position of that star, how is it possible that it does not cause any during the year, if the earth, in traveling around the sun, traveled an immense circle in that same meridian—which is to say, an orbit whose diameter would exceeded sixty million leagues, according to the calculations of the new astronomers? That is too contradictory, and demonstrates in the most evident manner that although our globe rotates on its axis, it does not change location.

  AESOP: What do you have to respond, Monsieur Jouroufle?

  JOUROUFLE: That I’ve lost my voice.

  AESOP: And how long have you been experiencing this misfortune?

  JOUROUFLE: Since people started talking about the movements of the earth.

  AESOP: That’s an enigma, Monsieur Jouroufle—explain it to us.

  JOUROUFLE: Here’s the explanation: on leaving me, Monsieur Heromondas instructed me expressly not to say a word in the absence of Monsieur Copernicus on the subject of the movement of our globe in the ecliptic, because otherwise I would succumb. If you want me to chatter as before, send for the citizen of Torun.

  AESOP: Let someone go and ask Copernicus to come here.

  A PHYSICIST of the retinue: I’ll go promptly, and I’ll soon find him, because I know the place where the philosopher usually meditates. (Aside.) I’ll tell Newton what’s happening.

  Scene Seventeen,

  Aesop, Pluche, Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, Jouroufle,

  Retinue of astronomer-geometers and physicists

  AESOP: Monsieur Jouroufle, does Copernicus have to dictate your lesson to you?

  JOUROUFLE: Oh, not to me; but you’ll see if he doesn’t assure you that the earth visits the twelve houses of the zodiac every year in turning around the sun, accompanied by the moon, which flutters around it, describing annually twelve epicycles on the orbit traveled by its primary, and in my opinion that must be the case. For according to my common sense, sharpened by the beautiful arguments of Monseigneur Newton and his adherents, it seems to me that the sun is a hundred thousand times bigger than the earth, according to the parallaxes that these scientists have been able to find, and according to the calculations of the savant Lalande and company, that star, by the fact of its enormous mass, ought to remain fixed in the center, and by its attraction force the earth to circle around it, because, for reasons so powerful, according to us, in relationships and conveniences, it’s necessary that the small body be determined and drawn by the larger one, as the sullen Indian is carried by his elephant.

  AESOP: Monsieur Jouroufle, you’ve already given proofs that your memory isn’t poor, but you’ve forgotten, it seems to me that attraction doesn’t surpass the region of the atmosphere and that, in consequence, the sun can’t have any empire over the earth by the effect of its pretended size, since its atmospheric fluid doesn’t extent as f
ar as us. Besides which, when the geometer-astronomers calculated the mass of the sun, they didn’t know that the apparent diameter of its disk was almost doubled by the optical property of our atmosphere and its own. The sun is therefore not as large as they have calculated.

  JOUROUFLE: I can’t help it if the astronomers are mistaken. Anyway, isn’t it necessary to conceded something to a beautiful hypothesis? Otherwise, would our sublime sciences be able to sustain themselves against an exact critic?

  PLUCHE: The case of the false theory of the displacement of the globe proves that in that regard people have tried to search for science where it was not, and would have blushed to find it where it really existed—which is to say, in the books of the legislator of the Hebrews. In fact, Moses, in his account of the creation of the universe, announces that God created the earth before all the other spheres, and that he employed three days either in forming it or embellishing it, while in a single day he fabricated and brought out of nothing the sun, the moon, the planets and the stars, which are innumerable. Why did God do that? Doubtless to give us a greater idea of the terrestrial globe, which he destined to be the abode of the humans who were to become its masters, and whom he created in his image. That dwelling designed and ornamented in a fashion appropriate to the excellence of the being that was to inhabit it, it was necessary for the divine being to illuminate, and it was then that he made all the sidereal bodies. The latter bodies, therefore, only came after the earth and for the service of the earth. Only having been created for the earth, they ought not to have any influence over its existence, not to subjugate it by being millions of times larger. On the contrary, their courses have been regulated in such a fashion as to serve as signals and mark the years and centuries for its particular utility. That is how powerful reasons and conveniences ought to be applied, not in terms of size or mass. Compared with the simple and sublime story of creation, what are these false hypotheses, these erroneous theories, children of a vagabond imagination? They are like the frail vessels that, after having sailed for some time without a compass in the vast basin of the seas, finally break against the shore on a dark night. But here comes Copernicus.