Cosmological
LettersCosmological
Letters
The Cosmological Letters
of J. H. Lambert (1728-1777) is one of the least accessible classics
of cosmological literature. Published in German in 1761, it was part of
a spurt of publications planned to win Lambert's entry to the Berlin Academy.
He became a member in 1765 although his formal training had ended with
grammar school. Genius and determination supplied the rest, but Lambert's
writings always bore the mark of a self-made man's intellectual self confidence.
He was fully convinced that further progress in astronomy would substantiate
his markedly a priori vision of "the arrangement of the world-edifice"
which he pictured as a hierarchy of stellar systems, each revolving around
a massive non-luminous body, or "dark regent," as he called them. For Lambert
the hierarchical organization assumed a collision-free universe, a prerequisite
for turning all planets and comets into safe habitats, a chief concern
in Lambert's cosmology steeped as it was in teleology. The Cosmological
Letters is a watershed in the history of cosmology. It illustrates
both the success and the risk of trying to fathom the construction of the
universe mainly with the eyes of the mind and without the aid of large
telescopes which made Herschel famous twenty or so years later.
The Introduction gives an account of the genesis and reception of the Cosmological Letters based in part on a study of Lambert's still unpublished correspondence. The translation, prepared for the 200th anniversary of Lambert's death, is a long needed contribution to the history of cosmology. The translator, Stanley L. Jaki, Distinguished University Professor at Seton Hall University, is the author of The Milky Way and The Paradox of Olbers' Paradox, both highly acclaimed historical studies in cosmology. For his Brain, Mind and Computers he received the Lecomte du Nouy Prize for 1970. His two series of Gifford Lectures, delivered in the University of Edinburgh in 1974-1975 and 1975-1976, are to be published under the title, The Road of Science and the Ways to God.