Rebecca's Thoughts

The idea of the unknown has existed longer than the known. The feeling of the unknown is pervasive in all aspects of life and acts as almost a constant in both the theoretical and physical parts of scholarship and life. Politics, science, and literature all deal with the unknown and are able to handle it in vastly different ways. In politics, there is a need to ensure that unknown variables are covered in policy to avoid extenuating circumstances that may be hurtful or counterproductive. Science may see the unknown as a question to be answered. The scientific approach to the unknown is more utilitarian and is used to further research and satiate humanity’s curiosity. Literature, on the other hand, can have a bit more fun in not only discovering the unknown, but also creating the unknown. Books and other media have an amazing advantage for investigating real-life issues fantastically or speculatively. These themes are especially prevalent in science fiction and work as a goal for the genre to achieve. Science fiction can combine the unknowns found in politics, science, and literature and see them as not only a goal to discover but also answer. 

The goal of this paper is to expand upon this idea by using Bernard de Fontenelle’s Conversations on the Plurality of Worlds and Cyrano de Bergerac’s The Other World: The Comical History of the States and Empires of the World of the Moon and applying them to the function of the unknown and how they seek to find answers. Both books were arguably written during times of growing scientific discovery and even faster-growing unknowns. Both books seek to answer questions and deliver them in an easy-to-understand manner, accessible to those interested in sciences and the structures hindering or enabling them. The rationale for choosing both books is that their approaches to the unknown are different. 

As a genre, science fiction can be quite versatile in both its mission and the stories that can be told. In the introduction of his book Critical Theory and Science Fiction, Carl Freedman defines science fiction as containing some degree of cognition of science, life, and philosophy as being crucial in not only defining science fiction but also in writing it (18-20). This act of cognition not only allows for discovery within literature but also within real-world applications of theories found within books. Once this understanding can be achieved, a precedent for larger, more existential questions can be asked and later answered.

This idea of cognition in science fiction literature is important and is reflected in “Human Culture and Science Fiction: A Review of the Literature, 1980-2016” by Christopher Benjamin Menadue and Karen Diane Chee. In their article, they found that science fiction literature has been used in research across disciplines, including theology, semantics, natural sciences, and education. When discoveries are made in the scientific community, there is an inherent distrust in the findings. This comes from the scientific institutions but also amongst the general public. Menadue and Chee found that science fiction can be used to “overwrite the cultural memory of historic events and has become centrally relevant in many explorations of contemporary culture” (2). As scary as that thought may sound, it is not necessarily a bad thing and can break down the barriers between everyday people and the scientific community if the information disseminated through science fiction is correct and accurate. “This breakdown of barriers is especially important when we consider the human, cultural perspective that can be added to hard sciences by this method, and how this may affect the effectiveness of science communication and the reputation of science in the minds of the public” (13). When good science fiction is written with accurate scientific facts, then there is room for education that would not happen without its introduction in popular media. People love to learn new things, and one way of doing this is through popular literature. 

With all this talk about the unknown, it would be important to understand what it is in the context of these books and how it relates to the books that will be addressed in this paper. According to John Huntington in “Science Fiction and the Future,” both science fiction and the unknown are connected through their view of the future and its relationship with the human experience. Huntington says, “Through [Science Fiction] often gives us a sense of facing the unknown, its true insights are generally into the known, and its primary value lies not in its ability to train us for the future, but in its ability to engage a particular set of problems to which science itself gives rise and which belong, not to the future, but to the present” (345). Although addressing works during the Golden Age of Science Fiction, a period which Huntington defines as starting in 1930, many ideas about the unknown and the future are addressed in Fontenelle and Bergerac’s works. 

In his book Conversations on the Plurality of Worlds, Fontenelle is concerned with education. The goal of the book is to bring science to people who would not be formally introduced to the subject, in other words, women. In the book, Fontenelle has created a type of popular science that is easy to understand and does not abide by formal institutions or their modes of instruction. This popular science can follow the latest trend in science and can philosophize about subjects with a modern lens. In doing so, a discourse around subjects like space, science, and innovation is allowed to happen amongst people who were previously shut out of the conversation. 

In the book, Fontenelle wants to prove the unprovable and in the process, answer the unknowns. This lends the book to being more a book about science and less a science fiction novel and although this is a valid discussion, there is a degree of speculation in the book that, for the purpose of this paper, classifies it as a science fiction novel. When it comes to discussions about the unknown and the complexities of science and humanity, the book does this through a series of discussions that happen over the span of seven nights. The ideas presented in the book start out as being big and almost vague sentiments. Ideas like each star containing a world, magic versus science, and not believing everything you see is presented as the foundation of what is to come in the rest of the book (Fontenelle 17-18). Further into the book, discussions about circular systems, habitation on the moon and other planets, and vortexes are discussed and introduced to the reader as fact. 

Bergerac’s The Other World: The Comical History of the States and Empires of the World of the Moon  is undeniably a science fiction novel and seeks to answer the questions around the unknown by going to the moon and meeting the people who live there. The book is a satire that seeks to poke holes in the Catholic Church’s teachings by finding alternatives to the stories and truths they tell. The main crux of the story is about learning and questioning. This highlights what is known versus unknown as Bergerac’s story reeks of skepticism and the idea that you can not live without questioning everything. Humans are curious by nature and as such seek to confirm ideas and theories. The setting of the moon allows for discussions about space, and colonialism, and exposes the lies told by the Church through speculation and science. At the heart of the book, there are conversations about the reclamation of knowledge and advance science through conversations and dialogue. 

Similar ideas are presented in this book as found in Fontenelle’s. Ideas of life outside of earth, gravity, and early astronomy are investigated. The difference between the two books is the degree of skepticism placed upon the ideas and thoughts presented. Bergerac sees science and truth as something to be investigated and critiqued. In doing so, his answers to scientific questions are formed in a way that erases the contexts found within French society at the time, like the role of the Catholic Church and the monarchy. His responses and proposals take little from the teachings of the Church, and instead attempt to answer questions in a more outlandish manner. In doing so, much of the science and ideas presented in The Other World are not really grounded in the realities of Earth or current science.

Both of these books attempt to answer the unknown and the questions that arise from it through a variety of ideas and views of science. Notions of life on the moon, stories about atoms, and other worlds are found within their covers. This leads to a new way of educating the masses and providing answers to long-lived questions. As science goes, however, many of the facts presented are either out of date or have been disproven. This leads to a time capsule of sorts, providing a look at how science used to be hundreds of years ago. This leads to the myth that science provides a reason for further discovery and instills freedom in learning and making mistakes. “Whereas science deals with necessities, fiction offers freedoms. Whereas science explores and explains what absolutely must happen, fiction creates its own sequences and consequences” (Huntington 347). 

To conclude this paper, there is a quote that comes to mind concerning the unknown and its place in life. Donald Rumsfeld, Former United States Secretary of Defence, said the following: “There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don’t know, we don’t know.” Science fiction is able to express the things we know we do not know by asking difficult and existential questions and although the science may be outdated, the impact of the people who were inspired can still be felt today. 

Works Cited

Bergerac, Cyrano de. The Other World: Comical History of the States and Empires of the Moon. 1653. Createspace Independent Publishing Platform, 2016.

Fontenelle, Bernard de. Conversations on the Plurality of Worlds. 1686. Berkeley, Calif. Univ. of California Press, 2000.

Freedman, Carl. Critical Theory and Science Fiction. Wesleyan University Press, 2013.

Huntington, John. “Science Fiction and the Future.” College English, vol. 37, no. 4, Dec. 1975, p. 345, https://doi.org/10.2307/376232.

Menadue, Christopher Benjamin, and Karen Diane Cheer. “Human Culture and Science Fiction: A Review of the Literature, 1980-2016.” SAGE Open, vol. 7, no. 3, July 2017, p. 215824401772369, https://doi.org/10.1177/2158244017723690.

Rumsfeld, Donald H. “DoD News Briefing – Secretary Rumsfeld and Gen. Myers.” Defense.gov, archive.defense.gov/Transcripts/Transcript.aspx?TranscriptID=2636.