Nicolas Malebranche (nonfiction)
Nicolas Malebranche, Oratory of Jesus (French: [nikɔlɑ malbrɑ̃ʃ]; 6 August 1638 – 13 October 1715), was a French priest and rationalist philosopher. In his works, he sought to synthesize the thought of St. Augustine and Descartes, in order to demonstrate the active role of God in every aspect of the world.
Although better known for his philosophical work, Malebranche made some notable contributions to physics, working within a broadly Cartesian framework but nevertheless prepared to depart from Descartes where necessary.
In 1699, he delivered an address to the Académie Royale des Sciences on the nature of light and color, wherein he argued that different colors resulted out of different frequencies in the pressure vibrations of subtle matter, much as different musical tones derived from different frequencies in the vibrations of air. His theory was presented as a corrective to Descartes' view, rather than a refutation thereof, but it has important parallels with the rival optical theory of Isaac Newton. Newton had already developed his position some thirty years earlier, but Malebranche probably would not have been aware of it until it was finally published in the Opticks of 1704, or, more likely, in its Latin translation of 1706. When Malebranche revised his 1699 paper for inclusion as the Sixteenth Elucidation of the 1712 edition of The Search After Truth, he inserted a number of references to "Newton's excellent work".
In addition, Malebranche wrote on the laws of motion, a topic he discussed extensively with Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. He also wrote on mathematics and, although he made no major mathematical discoveries of his own, he was instrumental in introducing and disseminating the contributions of René Descartes and Leibniz in France. Malebranche introduced l'Hôpital to Johann Bernoulli, with the ultimate result being the publication of the first textbook in infinitesimal calculus.
Malebranche also developed an original theory related to preformationism, postulating that each embryo probably contained even smaller embryos ad infinitum, like an idealized Matryoshka doll. According to Malebranche, "an infinite series of plants and animals were contained within the seed or the egg, but only naturalists with sufficient skill and experience could detect their presence."
In the News
Fiction cross-reference
Nonfiction cross-reference
- Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (nonfiction)
- Johann Bernoulli (nonfiction)
- Light (nonfiction)
- René Descartes (nonfiction)
External links:
- Nicolas Malebranche @ Wikipedia