Aspects of the popularization of cosmological ideas at the beginning of the XXth century

Antonio E. Ten Ros

CSIC-University of Valencia

To divulge the universe

Which were the views on the universe in the decades immediately previous to the two main theories concerning its origin and evolution? Contemporary astronomers and cosmologists have left us their opinions in the numerous books and articles devoted to this subject in the frame of the intense discussions held in the years this question was an subject of controversy. Their mostly technical arguments are easy to found in the specialized libraries and the cross references in their works permit us to follow the progress of their discussions. My interest here is not guided toward the thought of those scientists neither of the professionals of science. Instead, I prefer, in this context, to focus on the ideas some of the most important spreaders of the astronomy of their time directed to the larger groups of population that constituted their target publics.

The intuitive idea that is hidden after the election of this topic is that these visions of the universe, those which the spreaders were judging adapted at level of their readers, read in the families, commented maybe in the gatherings and in the daily conversations, could not let of influencing, somehow, the basic culture of the society. In fact, to explain the unconscious motivations and the relative success of some of the cosmological proposals those were made in subsequent years.

In the years in which I am interested, the literature produced in this field is extraordinarily abundant in all the erudite languages and in all the areas of the scientific and technological knowledge. A simple search on "popular astronomy" or "popular cosmology" in the databases of the main libraries gives us hundreds of entries. As in other scientific subjects, the reasons, in those that I will not enter here in detail, are easy to understand. They have to do with the access of the population to the education, but too with other very important cultural phenomena of this time. We can remember the impressive attendance to technological and scientific fairs and exhibitions (Ten (1992)), characteristic of the years of the turn of the century, or the enormous growth of the scientific journalism, both specialized and popular (Ten (2000)). At least from second half of the nineteenth century, to feel "scientific" was important for the western society.

In addition to this, the so-called "second industrial revolution" had finally introduced the science in households in the last decades of nineteenth century. The improving in the life conditions was clearly recognized as due to the scientific and technological advances and this fact was perceived in any level of the citizen life. The interest by the "scientific" topics, in the last third of the century, impregnated undoubtedly all the layers of the society. The scientific popularization had been converted into a mass phenomenon and cosmological topics were not among the less cultivated.

Let me to say some words on the idea of popularization. In the foreword of a small book of Lincoln Barnett, entitled "The Universe and Dr. Einstein" and published in 1948, Einstein himself devotes some words to reflect on the problem of the popularization and outlines with clarity the problem. The writer may try to become intelligible upon concealing the essence of the problem and offering to the reader superficial aspects or allusions, cheating him thus upon making him to believe that he understands. He can, instead, find himself giving to his reader an expert explanation of the problem, of such nature that the reader that it does not carry special preparation is unable to understand the exposition and loses the desire of continuing reading. To divulge, Einstein notes, is not to make accessible to "everybody" specialized scientific topics. Popularization tion, at least the effective popularization, has their target publics perfectly defined and hardly can it serve for other people. The knowledge of which target public is concerned is very important.

But popularization can be considered, too, from another point of view that focus on the person who produces it. Popularization reveals, when considering which points are included and which not in the study of a subject, which points are, in fact, important for the own spreader. We can learn, considering his works from this perspective, which aspects of the scientific problem that he divulges does himself consider essential in his exposition.

It in this sense that my main interest was directed to the study of how some well known astronomers and spreaders were presenting to special target publics their views on the universe in the final years of the XIXth century and first years of the XXth. I’m mainly concerned, then, with some specific target publics, some specific divulgers and some specific ideas of the era immediately prior to the theories of Einstein, before the very famous views on cosmology of the most popular scientist of the century "contaminated" the popularization of the former ideas on the universe.

A specific target public.

Which are my target people here? A first title of this paper was "The universe for women", followed by an explanatory subtitle, that coincides with the one which has finally remained. This title clearly focuses, at a first stage, on my specific target people, but perhaps could have seemed to be a bit sexist for a not aware reader. Nothing else far from the reality, indeed, but this requires a short explanation.

Everybody knows that the Entretiens sur la pluralité des mondes of Bernard of Fontenelle are in fact an astronomy devoted to a woman of his time, "Madame la Marquise de G." Maybe less people know that the great astronomer Jerome of Lalande, in whose monumental Astronomie learnt almost all the astronomers of the late XVIIIth century, wrote a small work entitled Astronomie des dames. Maybe still less people know that their compatriot Camille Flammarion emulated them writing at the beginning of the XXth century a suggestive book with the same title: Astronomie des dames

Why has appeared in the history of science this curious subclass of the popularization literature? Both Lalande and Flammarion gives us an explanation. We can read from Lalande:

"Je crois qu’il ne manque aux femmes que les occasions de s'instruire et de prendre de l'émulation; on en voit assez qui se distinguent, malgré les obstacles de l'éducation et du prejugé, pour croire qu’elles ont autant d'esprit que the plupart des hommes qui acquierent la célébrité dans les sciences".

(I believe the women lacks only the opportunities to learn. Despite of the barriers of education and prejudice, we can find enough number of distinguished women to believe than they have, at least, the same intelligence than the men who succeed in science).

In the same direction, Flammarion starts being asked Why an astronomy for women? He writes:

"Est-ce que le cerveau des dames et des demoiselles n’est pas fait comme le nôtre? Est-ce qu’elles nous sont inférieures? Est-ce que que, pour être compris d’elles, il faut parler un autre languaje que pour être compris des hommes?

(The women’s brain, is not made as our?. Are they less than men? Do we need to speak another languaje to be understtod from them?)

Flammarion is hurried on to recognize that woman equal to the man in intellectual powers and that to write especially for her would be humiliating for them. Why then to continue writing such books? Response is in either case the same. In spite of their interest, the women of the times in which Lalande and Flammarion wrote their books, in their immense majority had no too much opportunities of learning on the secrets of the sky... as the immense majority of the men of their time.

The woman to which were destined such works, generically, were representing, thus, in the image of both astronomers, the materialization of a special target people. They could be considered as persons with interest by learning, with capacity for this, but historically without any scientific training, with very few opportunities to be cultured and surely with a lot of misconceptions about the skies, their nature, origin of their bodies and influences on the humanity. This is, of course, the profile of the majority of the European population in the years of the change of the century and then the type of public in whose mentality the spreaders went to introduce their ideas about astronomy and, in our field of interest, about the universe. This public, in the mind of our spreaders, is very well represented by... women.

Therefore, this is why I became interested in this target people: What ideas on the universe believed the astronomers we study, were necessary for the training of this type of public? What ideas were wanting these divulgers that persons with almost none scientific training but with their thoroughly awake curiosity, especially in the topic that here more interests us, should learn? What ideas should these people transmit in their social and familiar environment on a topic so next and at the same time so distant? What to say about where are we and where are we going? Or, what is our place in the universe?

Lalande is a man of the eighteenth century, even if he wrote his book already in the nineteenth century. To my object I prefer to focus especially in Camille Flammarion, without any doubt the best and more read of the spreaders of astronomy in his time, in France and abroad. From the point of view I have outlined, the examples could be multiplied ad nauseam, but popular books on astronomy and popular writers in other countries, as far as I know, are more for an already cultured and trained people than for the persons that here interests to me.

The universe for the women

The apologies of the authors that here I consider and their equality statements between men and women, are not oppose to the fact that in their works they could introduce the ideas and style of writing that they believed more appropriate for the people of very low cultural level. In this sense seems timely to analyze that ideas and to compare them with those which were directed to more formed, more erudite publics.

What ideas on the universe have the cultured people at the beginning of the XIXth century? A good summary of these ideas that the XIXth century inherits of the XVIIIth can be found, for example, in a well-known of Alexandre Koyré (Koyré (1958)). Koyré, after traveling the medieval world, the Renaissance and the world of the scientific revolution, ends with the following words:

"The infinite universe of the new cosmology, infinite in duration as in extension, in the one which the eternal matter, according to eternal and necessary laws, is moved without end and without object in the eternal space, inherited all the ontological attributes of the divinity. But only those. Everyone else was carried out by the divinity in his way away".

Accepting the image Koyré outlines, the fact that the world is infinite, eternal and independent of the divinity, the astronomers let to the philosophers and to the theologians the task of speculating on the attributes of the space and of the time. They were more concerned about the celestial bodies, that they could observe, and they properties. The astronomies of the XIXth century are largely technical works; the astronomic discoveries were not very spectacular for not specialists and, to complete the frame, the popular literature on specialized scientific subjects was still a very young specialty

In this context appears at the beginning of century the only one work of Lalande that can be considered indeed as a work of popularization. The Astronomie des dames of Lalande is a small book in seventeen chapters, that try the topics most elemental and attractive for a curious not specialist. The treatment, however it is of technical quite character. There is no grants to the speculation and, indeed, though from the beginning was considered it a complement and update of the work of Fontenelle, is not found in it a flowered writing neither grants the speculation.

Good proof of this are the titles of its chapters:

Chapter I. On the general daily movement in the sky.

Chapter II. On the magnitude of the Earth.

Chapter III. Way of knowing the constellations.

Chapter IV. On the apparent movement of the sun. Time equation.

Chapter V. On the moon.

Chapter IV. On the calendar.

Chapter VII. On the eclipses.

Chapter VIII. On the system of the world.

Chapter IX. Of the attraction, or of the gravity of the celestial bodies. Density of the planets

Chapter X. Way of measuring the distance of the planets to the Earth. Diameter.

Chapter XI. On the refraction of the stars.

Chapter XII. On the satellites of Jupiter.

Chapter XIII. On the comets.

Chapter XIV. On the figure of the planets.

Chapter XV. On the plurality of the worlds.

Chapter XVI. On the flow of the sea.

Chapter XVII. Explanation of the fables.

In what to our object concerns, the image of the universe that Lalande wants to transmit to their readers, only the chapter XV contains interesting material. Two are the problems outlined in it: one is that of the possibility of a the plurality of civilizations in the universe, of course; the other is the size of the universe.

The topic of the plurality of the inhabited worlds is one of the classic topics of the astronomy and appears cited from the antiquity. The work of Giordano Bruno The infinite universe and the worlds frames well the ideas circulating in his era. In the same way, the Travel to the Moon and the Comic history of the states and empires of the Sun of Cyrano of Bergerac, published in 1657, after his death, or the Entretiens sur la pluralité des mondes (1686), of Fontenelle make it theirs. Numerous works will approach it in the XVIIIth century too, from very speculative points of view. To title of example of this abundance of literature suffice here to recall the Static Trip to the planetary world, (1794), written by the Spanish Jesuit Lorenzo Hervás and Panduro and published in Italy.

Lalande inevitably presents this well-known topic to their readers with much prudence. He cites Buffon and his calculations on the physical conditions needed to support life in the remaining planets of the solar system and alludes to philosophical conceptions on whether the same planets existence demonstrates its ability to support life. But Lalande takes no posture for any of these possibilities.

In the other topic, that of the nature and size of the universe, the astronomer proceeds still warily: Without entering the technical or philosophical discussions in this regard, it lets to their readers in a wise ignorance. Faced to these questions and remembering the words of D'Alembert in the Enciclopédie, leaves of the topic with a simple "Do not know nothing". No reference to the Creator, no God mention, unless in the chapter on the explanation of the fables, and presented, with a careful and prudent stile of writing, as one more among the pagan fables of the antiquity.

Lalande does not relinquish thus to the easy speculation. It is an astronomer and in spite to devote his work to a public of very low cultural level and little accustom to the scientific aridity, it does not make no grant to the imagination neither to the beliefs of their public. His work is a work of pure Astronomy, far from what would constitute the daily spiritual world of women of his time. His literary stile is not specially flowered. The Astronomie des dames is only a low level science lesson, not a tale nor a speculation. We can say, even, that it is still not "popular science".

THE FLAMMARION’S ERA

Along the XIXth century, the separation between astronomy, so much in its technical presentations as not technical and the more or less novelesque popularization, is enlarged. Around the end of century, the "popular astronomy" is a gender largely cultivated by astronomers, and is widely understood as a description of the new discoveries. A good example is a known book, written also by a woman, A Popular History of Astronomy during the XIXth Century (1885), of Agnes Clerke, that had numerous reeditions. In this book, that starts with the ideas of Herschel on the nebulae and the constitution of the stellar system, there are not considerations of speculative or philosophical type.

It is the same case, among the other multiple examples that we could collect. As another examples we can remember the Popular astronomy (1878) of Simon Newcomb, or the also very well known book Astronomy for everybody. A popular exposition of the wonder of the heavens (1908) of Robert Stawell Ball.

You can find a selected bibliography in Smith (1996)

But the target people of all these authors is an already cultured public. Our target public continues being the most popular one and we can continue to consider women of this time as his genuine representation. In 1903, as we have advanced, a singular man, Camille Flammarion writes a book with the same title than that of Lalande: Astronomie des dames.

Who is this Camille Flammarion? It is necesary to know something on the writer to understand his work.

Camille Flammarion was born in Montigny-le-Roi, in the French region of Haute Marne, a 26 of February of 1842, first son of a peasants family. Flammarion begins his education in Langres, in a clerical school. In 1856 he is going to Paris with his family. To continue his education, having no a wealthy position, he enters the school of the Brothers of Saint-Roch, that abandons to seek an employment and to try to prepare himself alone for the examination of the Bacalauréat. The young self-made man composes at this time a bulk manuscript, a compilation of his readings, which headlines Cosmogonie universelle. Etude du monde primitif. Histoire physique du globe depuis les temps les plus réculés de sa formation jusqu'au règne du genre humain, and reads books on astronomy. We can find among them the

Lettres à Palmyre sur l'Astronomie, published in 1857 for Charles Lyskenne and the Astronomie Populaire of François Arago.

Flammarion starts to dream about the astronomy, which combines with raids in the world of the spiritism. The spiritism will be his second great passion, that he hides carefully at the beginning of his scientific career, so as not to prejudice it, but that he will return to practice publicly at the end of his life. Through a medical friend who knows his hobbies, the young man is recommended to Urbain Le Verrier, director of the Observatory of Paris. After a mathematics examination, it is admitted, at the age of 16 years, as astronomer student of the observatory, where enters a 28 of June of 1858, full of a romantic ideal by discovering new worlds... to found that, instead of observing, it is destined to make monotonous calculations.

Flammarion starts a discrete struggle by coming into contact with the telescopes. Finally, one of the astronomers of the observatory, Jean Chacornac, takes it under this protection. With him, Flammarion can finally approach his eye to the lenses of the great telescope of the East tower. Here starts a passionate adventure, in which the young pupil is converted into divulger of the wonders of the sky. In 1862, Mallet-Bachelier, printer of the observatory of Paris, publishes his first work of related with astronomy. It is on a topic already classic and well elected by its continuous fascination on the public not specialized: La pluralité des mondes habités studies the possibility of life in the other planets of the solar system and the existence of parallel civilizations.

The book is a success. Only a shade tarnishes his happiness. Little after the publication of the book and by still unclear reasons, it is expelled by Le Verrier of the Observatory of Paris. But his withdrawal of the astronomy is little lasting. Common friends present him to the astronomer Charles Delaunay, then in the Bureau des Longitudes, an institution independent of the Observatory of Paris and commissioned with the application of the astronomy to the development of the geography and of the physics of the globe. Delaunay, faced to Leverrier, accepts the young Flammarion as calculator, commissioned to calculate the positions of the moon for The Connaissance des temps, the main publication of the Bureau (La Cotardière Ph.; Fuentes P. (1994), p. 92)

During his permanency in the Bureau, Flammarion starts a join friendship with erudite persons and participates in parties on astronomical subjects. He knows Ferdinand Hoefer, recognized author in the field of the History of science and director of the monumental Nouvelle biographie générale (Paris, Didot, 1851-1866). Hoefer introduces him in the world of the popular science magazines and especially in the Cosmos, perhaps the most important french review in the field. The 5 of June of 1863, Camille Flammarion publishes his first article in the magazine, on the subject of the total moon eclipse of the 1 of June of 1863.

His destination is thrown: his life is going to be consecrated to the astronomic spreading. In 1865 is published his second book on popular astronomy Les mondes reels et les mondes imaginaires. From that date are happened more than sixty books, a specialized magazine L'Astronomie, still published, various collections under his direction and countless articles in magazines of all type.

Best seller after best seller, the books of Flammarion, translated to all the cultured languages, invade the households. But Flammarion is also a lecturer. The direct contact with his public starts with some conferences promoted by the Association politechnique to divulge the science between the less cultivated public of Paris. Flammarion proposes in 1865 an astronomy course, which would be given in the amphitheatre of the Ecole Turgot. Aged 23 years, the young spreader is applauded by a public enthusiast and little illustrated, which enjoys with the images the skies put to his scope. Next year, Flammarion gives a conference course in the Societé of Conferences du Bulevard des Capucins, creating a real spectacle with the aid of an optician, Alfred Molteni. The skies are projected before the thunderstruck listening. Publications and conferences convert to Flammarion into the most brilliant star of the French astronomy for the great public. In 1879 is published the first issue of his more known work , the Astronomie populaire, "ouvrage couronné par l'Académie française et adopté par le ministre de l'Instruction publique pour les bibliothèques populaires". Only in France and in its successive issues will be sold 131.000 copies of this book.

The success carries to him to new editorial adventures. In March of 1882 appears the first number of his magazine L’Astronomie, with an issue of 6.000 exemplars and on its base will be constituted the Societé astronomique of France, that is recognized officially 28 of February of 1887. Flammarion is near the top.

The Astronomie des dames.

When Flammarion publishes his Astronomie des dames, in 1903, is already a mature and consecrated author, knowing his public, their pleasures and needs and the ways to the success. If he writes an astronomy for women is, as he accepts at the beginning of the book, following a suggestion of Adolphe Brisson, director of the Annales politiques et litteraires. The book, as himself recognizes in the introduction" Aux lectrices of ce livre", is, of course, not to humiliate the women discriminating them from the men, but to help them and to give them a present: " L'astronomie est faite pour la femme, it concludes in his introduction.

The Astronomie des Dames can serve, since, as a test. It is an unbeatable indicator of how an intelligent popularizer could present the universe to some of the less cultivated public. Undoubtedly, Flammarion knows, the women are, at this level, the wardens of traditions, cultural, religious... But they can too be interested in the most important topics of the science and to introduce new ideas in their sons at the first stages of their lives. This is their value. Let me to analyze briefly the book.

The work is developed in twelve lessons, of sufficiently explicit titles:

First lesson.- The contemplation of the sky.

Second lesson.- The constellations.

Third lesson.- The stars, suns of the infinite.

Fourth lesson.- Our star the Sun.

Fifth lesson.- The planets. Mercury, Venus, The Earth and Mars.

Sixth lesson.- The planets. Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.

Seventh lesson.- The comets.

Eighth lesson.- The Earth.

Ninth lesson.- The Moon.

Tenth lesson.- The eclipses.

Eleventh lesson.- The methods.

Twelfth lesson.- The universal and eternal life.

The style is bombastic, very flowered in its literary stile, and in its first pages, maybe as image of his owns ideas on the languaje that could better attract the women , a bit sexist.

In the words of Flammarion:

"... it is the milky route, compound of several million of suns! The night is deep, the abyss is immense... Which woman, which young lady would remain insensitive before this magic spectacle of the starry sky... Yes, better than the man, busier, more devoted to its businesses, more material, less sensitive, less ideal, less dreamy... The women are made to admire this spectacle and to understand it.

... it is not illogical to try to paint a small astronomic table for the woman. She deserves it. .. and the paper that it is intended for them to play in the life, by the education of the children, it is so noble and important that, indeed, would not be bad to see the elemental astronomic notions taught by the same young mother to the emerging souls opened to all the curiosities. "

Scientifically the book is quite elemental. Continuing with the characteristic style that employs in their more popular works, Flammarion introduces very superficially the large chapters of the science of the skies. Flammarion is converted into a poet of the astronomy and approaches their readers to the celestial vault by using the technique of a dialogue, which intermingles poetics licenses and gallant phrases with astronomic data and drawn examples from the daily life.

The first lesson, "A watch to the sky", contains already the principal ideas that the popularizer wishes to record in the mind of their readers and, by so much, permits us to know what he was judging a non cultivated but avid of knowledge person needed to know to accomplish the task the society needed from her:

"The universe is infinite. The space does not have limits. If, dragged by our love to the sky, we had the fantasy and above all the means, of undertaking a trip till the limit of the skies, we would remain quite surprised, arriving to the limits of the Milky Way, by seeing renewed, before our surprised eyes, the grandiose and phenomenal spectacle of a new universe; and if, in our insane career, we surpassed these new archipelago of worlds to launch us to the search of the barrier of the skies, we would find always forever before us, new universes following the crossed universes. Millions of suns turn in the immense space. Everywhere the creation is renewed in infinite variations."

The well-known topic of the plurality of inhabited worlds can not lack in this panorama. Flammarion returns on the ideas of his first book:

"According to all the probabilities, the universal life has been expanded over there and here and there has scattered the germ of the intelligence in those distant worlds that we guess in the environment of the countless suns that fill the ether. .. Countless worlds, we dream about them. Who says us that its unknown inhabitants do not think also about us, they also, and that the space is not crossed by thought flights as it is by the effluviums of the universal gravitation and of the light. (P.33-34)

The others first ten lessons hardly have interest to our object. Try to the rudiments to the spherical astronomy, of the day and the night and of the solar system. Continuing with his poetical and bombastic style, Flammarion introduces his readers in the secrets of the day and the night, the stations, the bodies of the solar system and the most spectacular phenomena of the astronomy, the eclipses and the comets.

Finally, in the chapter 12," the universal and eternal life ", Flammarion returns to display before his target public, a vision of the universe in its ensemble. In a kind of conclusion of the ideas that better can remain engraved in the mind of his loved women, he returns on the problem of the life in other worlds, until the limit of finding in them the true sense of the astronomy:

"Have you not felt that all this is not died neither desert. .. and that, on the contrary, the real subject of the astronomy, instead of be stopped in the verification of the positions and the movements of the stars, is to permit us to penetrate until them, to make us to guess, to know, to appreciate, its physical constitution, its amount of life and of intellectuality in the universal order?" (p.356).

After this statement, Flammarion introduces to their readers in the chemical bases of the life and in the multiple forms of existence that they can be given in other worlds, depending on its possibilities to sustain life, till to arrive to imagine an infinite and eternal space, full of cradles and of tombs, of future worlds and deceased worlds. To think otherwise, to imagine that our world will be the only one inhabited in the infinitude of the universe is simply stupid:

... it is not to reason as a philosopher. .. but as a fish. All rational fish would imagine that would be impossible to live out of the water. .. the advice is to see a little more far and to enlarge the horizon a little narrow of the customary ideas. (p.366)

We find, here, a perfect description of what is the universe that a successful popularizer believed that needed to know the women or, generalizing, the less cultured layers of society. That is universe Flammarion wanted that the mothers transmitted to their children from the cradle. That was the universe that the great spreader believed could connect with the intuitive ideas of their so little cultivated public. Our planet is only a province in an infinite universe. Our existence is not more than a stage in an eternal life. .. and in that eternal life is not appointment to God. We are not alone in the infinite universe and it is the astronomy, not the religion, the one that gives us the wings to lead us to the sanctuary of the truth. For very evident that could seem now such idea, still at the beginning of century and between the public to those Flammarion spoke, introduced an important fracture in their conceptual and religious world. It is not strange that Flammarion had conflicts with the catholic hierarchy and managed his life, in this aspect, in a difficult equilibrium trying not to open new fronts in his career.

Universes for men?

Now, we can ask ourselves if there exist differences between this "universe for women" and other images of the universe of Flammarion, devoted to other target people more erudite?

Practically from the beginnings of his career of scientific spreader, Flammarion devotes many pages of his books to the image of the universe. One good example of this is the third part of one of his more popular former works: Lumen, recits de l’infini, published for the first time in 1873 on the basis of former articles. In the third part of this book, "in the infinite"... Flammarion talks us about the space as infinite, eternal, uncreated, necessary. To the question: why there is some thing in this space? He recognizes that still "this is an intrinsic secret, that today would be superfluous to try to deepening" .

Maybe the most meaningful change between this work and the Astronomie des dames is the treatment of the God idea. In Lumen still exists a role for God. it is certainly not the God of the monotheistic religions but a panteist god not located in any part of the space. Writes Flammarion:

God does not exist more in a point of the Sky than in the Earth, or to speak more exactly, God is nowhere more visible than here. There is no region of the infinite a place covered of brilliants on which is lifted the throne of the Highest. .. The Sky does not exist; the astronomic space is infinite. God is a pure spirit, or better said, the pure spirit. .. his existence is indisputable because of we could not explain without him the existence of the intelligence in the creation of the mathematics and the intellectual and moral truths. .. (p. 372-3).

The space of Flammarion seems here still very close to the newtonian space and his metaphysics to the newtonian, Even if we can discus the meaning of some of the paragraphs, the God of Flammarion, present in Lumen, is in the later works less and less agent. Beginning with the contradictions between the doctrine of the plurality of the inhabited worlds and the Christian God, the God of Flammarion becomes more and more diffuse, more close to Nature. Nature is God. After Lumen, religious ideas practically disappear from the astronomical works of Flammarion. No traces of this God are in the Astronomie des dames.

His more known book, the Astronomie populaire, first published in 1879, it is a work much more technical, less poetic and less speculative. The moon, the interior planets, the foreign planets are studied in its astronomic and physical characteristics. If their possible inhabitants are mentioned, this mention constitutes a fact totally accessory. Unless a speculation on the size of the inhabitants of the moon, founded in the difference of gravity with the Earth, the topic of the plurality of inhabited worlds is lost between the data pages. Welcomed if existent, but the extraterrestrial civilizations are, by the moment, only speculations.

The image of the universe is even more physical than in Lumen. Its center is in all places, its circumference in no place. The universe is infinite in all the senses. Flammarion writes:

" In this infinite, the associations of suns and of worlds that constitute our visible universe do not form but an island of the great archipelago, and, in the eternity of the duration, the life of our so proud humanity, with all his religious and political history, the life of our all planet deposits, it is not but that the perception of an instant... (p.826).

If in the Astronomie populaire the universe is already clearly an infinite physical, this image will be completed in other works. Maybe the clearest image of the universe of Flammarion will be the one which is presented in an article of the many than wrote, collected in the Spanish version of How will be finished the world, titled A prodigious trip. Flammarion returns largely on the idea of the infinite universes, maybe populated by unknown humanity, in an eternal evolution, with no beginning, with no end:

"The universe was not formed all in a piece in the origin of the things. This same origin does not exist. We find in the space suns of all the ages. .. If the first creations formed by the matter and energy had nor be renewed, would not have already universe. All primitive energy that lit the suns would be already extinguished."

God, the newtonian god or even the god of Lumen, already unnecessary, disappears from astronomy. Again Flammarion speaking:

"The investigations on the nature – not about God (something which is an absurd pretension and solely deigns of a theologian) - on the being absolute, on the origin of energy that supports, encourages and governs the universe, on the force that work generally and perpetually through the infinity and of the eternity. .. could not be undertaken. .. before the discoveries of astronomy and modern physics. ..

The true religion, that is to say, the union of the free spirits in the investigation of the truth will not another thing but a work of an era such our own, one era in which some brave and disinterested spirits have rejected the hypocrisy of the untruthful doctrines, without to fall for this in the childish atheism of the ignorant people... These men will apply sincerely and freely the various branches of the science in search of the intimate constitution of the universe and of the human being. The future is going instructing us. Currently we know very little: only we begin to learn. (p.79)

So, There are not substantial differences between Flammarion’s universe "for men" and his universe "for women" . The more speculative considerations lack in this last universe but the image than Flammarion wishes than the mothers transmit with the rest of their culture to their children is clear: The universe is infinite and eternal. Maybe other civilizations accompany us but only the astronomy will give finally reason of this and will permit to reach the truth. Neither in the astronomy "for men" nor in the most explicit astronomy for women have content religious considerations. The only true difference is litterary stile. If the ideas on astronomy for women can be, perhaps reduced in their mathematical aspects, the same that for the men, the words to use to transmit them are very different.

Such is the image that a great popularizer wants to offer to their publics, from the more to the less cultivated. For other great spreaders, in France as well as in other countries, such image is even excessive and too dogmatic. The problem of the universe is too complex to approach to it with the knowledge of the present time. As says Robert Stawell Ball, the already cited author of other of the large best-sellers of the astronomic populatization of this epoch, speaking about the strange nebulae discovered with the telescope of Lord Rosse and of the possibilities of calculating its distances to the sun:

".. We have arrived to a point in which the intelligence of the man lets of lending to him more light, and in which his imagination has lacked to him in his pledge of confirming the acquired knowledge". (p. 320).

The examples could be multiplied easily through the abundant popular astronomic literature of the era. But we are doubtful in asserting that the clearest image, for that avid people but little cultivated is, without any doubt, the image Flammarion transmits to their target peoples. .. And knowing the tuning of Flammarion with the readers for those that he was writing, that is the idea that he believes it is being installed in the unconscious mentallity of the society.

And Einstein was made.

In 1917 Albert Einstein publishes his first theory of the cosmos. It is the end of an era in the popularization of the part of astronomy that deals with the image of the universe for non-scientifically trained people and the beginning to other era thoroughly different. It is not necessary to enter here in it. The einstenian image, in the framework of his General Relativity, escapes already, as is well known, to any comprehension attempt by the great public.

The universe of the General relativity is, inevitably, a mathematical universe, from which the spreaders can detach some visual images for consumption of their public. But we recognize the reason of the words of Einstein on the Barnett’s publication cited at the beginning. . The infinite universe, this eternal universe loved by Flammarion and their readers, disappears among a tide of curved universes, open or closed, but incomprehensible for the layman. The possibility of life in other worlds, other of the constant ideas of people like Flammarion, leaves definitely the area of the cosmology.

The examples to cite would be countless. Suffice here to recall, to title of example, the work of an astronomer of the observatory of Paris, Charles Nordmann, entitled Einstein et l'univers (1921) and published to the heat of the visit of Einstein to Paris. It is a work still written in the style of Flammarion, but already inserted in the new framework. The work starts with an analysis of the space and time concepts to the light of the theory of the relativity. To this necessary introduction continues a small treated on restricted Relativity, understandable solely for persons of scientific training. Next chapters introduce General Relativity, and this permits the writer to speak about the idea of non-euclidean space. The universe, our universe, is no longer euclidean. The universe is... curved.

The chapter 7 of the work deals directly with our subject: it is entitled "L'univers est-il infini? It is no more a question of aesthetics, of beauty. To asks this question one must begin discussing the paradox of Olbers, the variation of the law of the universal gravitation with the distance, the finitude of the number of stellar systems. ..

Accepting the experimental data shortage and of sufficient knowledge to approach so serious problems, Nordmann arrives to the kernel of the problem. What means after Einstein the question on whether or not is infinite the universe? The conclusion of Nordmann is already the standard: For a relativist, the universe can be unlimited without be infinite. (p. 183). But this concept, as he recognizes, is practically impossible to understanding, of visualizing, without the very difficult mathematical theories that uses the general relativity.

Here stops the possibilities of popularizing the universe for the great public. From the twenties, the "einstenian" views of the universe have contaminated the former, simpler and understandable image of an infinite universe. A simpler universe but in which were melted many ideas, physical and astronomic as well as philosophical and religious, built in the two last centuries as a reaction against the universes created by many different cultures from the most ancient times. The finite cosmos, embraced by his creator, existing himself in the outside spaces, the universe that Dante shows us in his Divine Comedy, disappears with Newton in the mind of the scientists. Next step is to detach God from the universe and to build the attractive image of infinite and eternal universe. No longer it exists the creation. The Genesis is only a work of fiction. This is the idea we’ve found at the beginning of the XXth century, clearly exposed by Flammarion.

Flammarion, in his eight decade, can’t accept the Einstenian views. In a letter to a friend, dated 30 July 1921, he explodes: "A space with a shape, curved! Mr. Einstein, you know that space-time, the fourth dimension, is already in the Encyclopédie de Diderot et D’Alembert. But it has not a shape!... (La Cotardière, Fuentes (1994) p. 319)

When the big bang arrives, with it arrives again a metaphysics. Let me to use a distinction that introduces Helge Kragh in their articles on the history and philosophy of the cosmology in the XXth century. Kragh distinguishes between philosophy of the cosmology and philosophy in the cosmology. The distinction, without entering the analysis of Kragh, can help us to understand our writers of "astronomies for women". His objective, as asserts Flammarion, was to make astronomy, not theology. The infinite and eternal universe was obviating philosophical and theological problems that the theory of the big bang had made to reborn.

The history of the importance of the philosophy in the cosmology, if we continue to use the distinction of Kragh, continues. As Adolf Grunbaum notes in his article "Theological misinterpretations of current physical cosmology", the polemics are far from have concluded, in spite of the fact that, with the union of the cosmology with the physics of particles, the discussions on the origin and the nature of the universe have been converted into an esoteric field until for the immense majority of the scientists. For Lalande, for Flammarion, as for many popular scientists prior to Einstein, the scientific mentality had found a comfortable space in that infinite and eternal space, perhaps full of still unknown civilizations. A space in which the idea of a god-man, incarnated and martyred in a place of Palestine did not had any soundness. For many subsequent scientists, in spite of the experimental data, this universe continued to be the most comfortable space.

I’ve not made until here any references to the steady-state theory. It’s not my matter here. But perhaps Flammarion and his Astronomie des dames can help us to understand how uncomfortable could he feel, despite problems of ages and speeds, some astronomers to still remember the old, friendly, infinite, eternal space.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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