Page - 25 - in Maximilian Hell (1720–92) - And the Ends of Jesuit Science in Enlightenment Europe

25Introduction Trévoux, launched in 1701) and the various editions of the Dictionnaire de Trévoux (1704–71) were fundamental Jesuit contributions to the Enligh- tenment.71 In terms of substantive matters of science, the key breakthrough of the removal of books defending the motion of the Earth from the Index— apparently on the initiative of Ruggiero Giuseppe (Ruđer Josip) Boscovich (1711–87)—did not come about until 1757.72 However, the heliocentric system and Newtonian astronomy, which Boscovich was also the first Jesuit fully to embrace and develop, had gained a foothold in Jesuit colleges already in the first half of the eighteenth century, in tandem with the rise of algebra besides geometry, in the style of René Descartes’s (1596–1650) idea of a mathematically based universal science. In Jesuit mathematics, this notion, known as mathesis universalis, also implied an openness to incorporating Newton’s and Leibniz’s integral and differential calculus in their teaching (though not yet publica- tions) by Jesuit professors.73 The same holds for the introduction of modern physics in the courses on mathematics as well as natural philosophy,74 includ- ing even atomism (with Boscovich again playing an important role75). The analysis of the “macro structures” of the Jesuit scientific tradition also demon- strates the unbroken continuity of this tradition into the eighteenth century, up to the suppression of 1773—a revival that needs to be viewed as part of the overall acceleration of scientific work in mid-eighteenth-century Europe. After a decline in Jesuit scientific publications in the first decades of the eighteenth century, there was substantial and sustained growth after about 1730, together with a marked shift from Aristotelian subjects toward the mathematical and physical sciences, as well as a change in patterns of authorship: a smaller scien- tific elite within the order contributed a considerably larger number of works, undoubtedly thanks to the expansive internal control over the allocation of talent and duties. The institutional setting also continued to develop dynami- cally, with a large number of chairs in mathematics and experimental physics, physical cabinets, and no fewer than twenty-five astronomical observatories 71 Rubiés, “Jesuits and the Enlightenment,” 7. 72 Jesuits had long acknowledged the uses of Copernicanism for calculations but refused to accept its cosmological implications because of their incompatibility with notions of Ar- istotelian physics such as the incorruptibility of the heavens. 73 Udías, Jesuit Contribution to Science, 23–40. 74 Marcus Hellyer, “Jesuit Physics in Eighteenth-Century Germany: Some Important Conti- nuities,” in O’Malley et al., Jesuits, 1:538–54; Hellyer, Catholic Physics, 165–80, 221–27. 75 Gordon G. Brittan, “The Role of the Law of Continuity in Boscovich’s Theory of Matter,” and Henk K. Kubbinga, “La théorie de la matière de Boscovich: L’atomisme de points et le concept d’‘individu substantiel,’” in Bursill-Hall, R.J. Boscovich, 211–24, 281–306; Hans Ull- maier, Puncta, particulae et phaenomena: Der dalmatinische Gelehrte Roger Joseph Boscov- ich und seine Naturphilosophie (Hannover-Laatzen: Wehrhahn Verlag, 2005)