biography
| name: |
Fontenelle, Bernard le Bovier, sieur de (Lord of)
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pronunciation:
[fõtuhnel]
| sex:
| male
|
| lived:
| (1657–1757)
|
| biography:
| Scientist, playwright, and essayist, born in Rouen, NW France. He studied at the Jesuit college at Rouen, and in 1697 became secretary to the Académie des Sciences, and later its president. He won a great literary reputation in Paris, producing a wide range of literary genres, including idylls, satires, dialogues, critical essays, histories, and tragedies. He denounced religions in Histoire des oracles (1687) and defended Copernican science in Entretiens sur la pluralité des mondes (1688). He took the side of the Moderns in Digression sur les Anciens et les Modernes (1687). |
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