MDMD(3): Father Boscovich

[Michel Ryckx]

Since I was looking for a bit of background on Mason-Dixon-time, I
bought yesterday Paul Hazard, La pensée européenne au XVIIe siècle: de
Montesquieu à Lessing, 1963, Librairie Arthème Fayard, Paris, originally
published in 1946.

It is very, very good in that fine French tradition of the 'Annales' way
of writing history. (It casts a different light on the strange idea of
'the pursuit of happiness', idea that was developed in this time; but
that's another matter).

And whom did I meet?  Our Father Boscovitch.  He appears, only in name,
in a chapter on how the classic variations in christianity reacted when
enlightened thought gradually, very gradually, spread around Europe.

Trying to translate the paragraph.  The author discusses the different
ways religious scholars were adopting the new, experimental method of
this period, in order to free all belief from obscurantism, and
continues:

"If we were willing to try to give a sketch of these great efforts, we
would point in the first place at those thinkers who understood
aristotelism was from another time; who accepted Descartes, while the
previous generation banned him; and were looking in his writings for
arguments on the immortality of the soul; christian thinkers, who read
and admired Locke, without following his agnosticism, but were
exploiting the psychological treasures he discovered.  We would name
those scholars, scholars of the highest level, father Boscovich in
Ragusa [that's the old name for Dubrovnik, M.], Haller and Bonnet in
Switserland, Réaumur in Paris, Euler in Germany, who all showed that the
method of experimenting did not lead to not believing, but the idea of
finality supported."

Perhaps a full English translation available?

Michel.