On Uncertainty’

‘On Uncertainty’ is included in Madeleine de Scudéry’s 1686 Moral Conversations [Conversations morales]. It stages a dialogue between characters described as ‘decisive’ (Amalthée, Amerinte, and their male friend, Aristene) and ‘uncertain’ (Timandre and his female friend Isidore), and explores the danger of too much uncertainty. The friends discuss how one threatening example of uncertainty is doubt that extends to faith; and atomism, both ancient and modern, is treated as an example of a doctrine which denies the existence of an intelligent and providential God in its promotion of the role of chance. The conversation allows for the exploration of different perspectives while also offering a Christian moral that primarily bases faith on reason. It also models a sociable, conversational approach to enquiry, mixing rhetorical prose on atomism and theology with playful poems about atoms. The conversation ends amiably with the group drawing up a list of things that are certain (faith, laws of the nation, obeying God and the King) and things that are not (physics, astronomy, medicine, all sciences, personal taste).

Contributors

Helena Taylor

(author)

Associate Professor of French and Comparative Literature at University of Exeter

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5683-7967

Helena Taylor is Associate Professor of French and Comparative Literature at the University of Exeter. Her research focuses on the intellectual and literary history of early modern France, particularly the seventeenth century: she is interested in cultures of learning, women's varied intellectual practices and their reception, classical reception, cultural quarrels, and translation studies. Her first book, The Lives of Ovid in Seventeenth-Century Culture (OUP, 2017) examines the reception of the life of the ancient Roman poet Ovid in 17th-century French culture. Her second book, Women Writing Antiquity: Gender and Learning in Early Modern France (OUP, 2024), was written thanks to a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship, and was awarded an Honourable Mention in the Society for the Study of Early Modern Women and Gender Book Prize. She is the co-editor of Ovid in French: Reception by Women from the Renaissance to the Present (OUP, 2023); and Women and Querelles in Early Modern France (a special issue of Romanic Review, 2021). Helena is currently leading a five-year project, Cultures of Philosophy: Women Writing Knowledge in Early Modern Europe, originally awarded as a European Research Council Horizon Europe Starting Grant in the 2022 round (€1.5 million) and now funded by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), under the UK government’s Horizon Europe funding guarantee [grant number EP/Y006372/1].