HoP 493 Better Nature: The French Garden

Peter Adamson· Host0:00

[classical music] Hi, I'm Peter Adamson, and you're listening to the History of Philosophy podcast, brought to you with the support of the philosophy department at King's College London and the LMU in Munich. Online at historyofphilosophy.net. Today's episode: Better Nature: The French Garden. The story goes that a young Descartes, recently graduated from his studies with the Jesuits, lived in a village outside of Paris called Saint-Germain. Here, he would have been able to visit royal gardens, which featured a grotto with dramatic lighting, music from a hydraulic organ, and songs made by mechanical birds. It's almost irresistible to think that these gardens helped to inspire his mechanistic approach to nature. If so, Descartes would return the favor because the story also goes that 17th century French gardens were inspired by his philosophy. With their geometric layout, they put his rationalistic approach to nature into physical form, creating what we might venture to call Cartesian spaces. This is the most obvious and familiar connection between intellectual history and the sort of garden built by Louis XIV at Versailles, but there are others. These gardens grew from many seeds, including contemporary science, the colonialist enterprise, and the political ideology